AG rejects Parkland Memorial Hospital’s secrecy effort
For more than two years, Parkland Memorial Hospital has tried to protect fired or otherwise terminated employees. Now Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office has rejected the effort.
When facing open-records requests for personnel records, Parkland’s standard practice since at least 2012 has been to tell ex-employees that they could object. It cited a state law allowing public hospital employees’ names and other basic information to be withheld if they detail specific safety concerns.
As I reported Saturday, the effort led to an Aug. 26 AG ruling that let Parkland suppress the name of a nurse who had been fired twice over patient abuse — and who had already been named in a News article.
My questions about the secrecy order led the AG to issue a corrected version over the weekend. The law that Parkland has been citing “does not apply to a former employee,” the new order says.
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