Hundreds of pages of confidential health information about people who used the Apopka Fire Department’s emergency medical services were uploaded to the Orange County clerk of the court’s website and were available to anyone to download from July 3 to July 15, city attorney Joe Byrd told the City Council Wednesday, July 17, during its regularly scheduled meeting.
Byrd said the 1,105-page document that had hundreds of the pages containing personal medical information was uploaded to the clerk of the court’s website by David Sulik or an employee of his on July 3 and remained available to the public until Monday, July 15, when Byrd received an emergency order from a judge to seal the documents because having them available to the public is a violation of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), he said. The city attorney said he learned of the filing of the health documents on Saturday, July 13.
Sulik is the owner of NEB Group, Inc., which, until earlier this year, had been the city’s billing service for its emergency medical services runs for at least the past 12 years.
The city filed suit in early June against NEB, Sulik as an individual, and 3 Rivers Billing, Inc., a company based out of Minnesota.
In the suit, the city claims that it potentially lost tens of thousands of dollars because of billing issues. At a meeting on June 5, Byrd told the City Council that NEB did not do its job properly when it was supposed to be billing and collecting payments for the city of Apopka for emergency medical services provided by the Apopka Fire Department.
“NEB breached the agreement by failing to make a good faith effort to collect on bills in a reasonably prudent manner and in following the industry standard costing what Apopka estimates and believes to be tens of thousands of dollars in revenue,” the suit states.
In the lawsuit, the city alleges that, “NEB has withheld funds due and owing to Apopka given the discrepancies between NEB’s statements of net collection amount and the true collected amount.”
As a result, “Apopka may be entitled to tens of thousands of dollars but Apopka cannot evaluate the exact amount because NEB has failed to produce accurate reports and supporting documentation for its various ‘adjustments,’” according to the lawsuit.
The full story appears on page 1A of the Friday, July 19, issue of The Apopka Chief. Subscribe today!
