Joseph Rugg's Health Law Blog

Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration has been trying to shut down Hillandale Assisted Living, a home for mentally disabled adults, for over a year — ever since The Miami Herald reported its long record of abuse and neglect.

But the Pasco County assisted-living facility (ALF) has demanded a full evidentiary hearing. The resulting legal battle has a Tampa mental-health counselor pinned in the middle.

Joanna Theiss Mulder, who counsels residents of Hillandale and other ALFs, has been ordered to testify and turn over her patient records under an AHCA subpoena. Mulder refuses.

In court papers filed on Wednesday, Mulder argued that it would actually violate the law for her to release any records without her patients’ consent.

The patients named on Muller’s subpoena “specifically object to AHCA’s effort to access their records as an invasion of their privacy,” said the papers filed in Hillsborough Circuit Court.

The irony is that both AHCA’s attorney and Mulder see themselves as protectors of the mentally-ill clients who live at Hillandale, judging from their legal arguments.

See on healthnewsflorida.org

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