State v. Thomason

George Roberts, a 91-year-old resident of the Western Hills Health Care Center (WHHCC) nursing home, fell and broke his leg. Roberts suffered from Alzheimer’s dementia. Roberts was a Medicaid patient, and WHHCC was a Medicaid-certified facility. Roberts’s broken leg was treated at the hospital, and then he was returned to WHHCC. Over the next month, Roberts’s broken leg became severely infected because caretakers allowed urine to leak into the cast. Roberts died from the infection. Michael Dewey, an investigator from Oklahoma’s (plaintiff) Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, visited WHHCC to investigate the circumstances surrounding Roberts’s death. While Dewey was at WHHCC, he saw a photograph of another patient with a severely infected bedsore. However, even after Dewey obtained a search warrant, WHHCC refused to give Dewey information, identification, or records related to the photographed patient, stating that Dewey was not entitled to the records because the patient was not a Medicaid patient. Patsy Thomason (defendant) was the regional director of the Tutera Group, which managed WHHCC. The State of Oklahoma charged Thomason with (1) caretaker neglect, alleging that WHHCC’s neglect caused Roberts’s death; and (2) obstruction, arguing that WHHCC was required to release all patient records requested during a Medicaid Fraud Control Unit institutional abuse investigation. Thomason countered, arguing that (a) she did not fall within the definition of a caretaker under the caretaker-neglect statute; and (b) the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit could not demand records for non-Medicaid patients because of patient confidentiality. The trial court dismissed Oklahoma’s charges against Thomason. Oklahoma appealed.