Billing dispute leads to blocked patient data in ME

When staffers at a ti1ny medical practice in far-northern Maine arrived at work one July morning and tried to view medical records for that day's patients, they got an unsettling response from their computer. "Access denied.'' The staff called a technician, who confirmed what had happened. As part of a billing dispute, the vendor for the clinic's electronic health records — a German corporation with US headquarters in Boston — took the unusual step of blocking the staff's ability to look up medical histories on its 4,000 patients. Nurses and physicians could no longer use the system to review diabetes records, blood pressure logs, medication histories, allergy reports, lab results. Nothing.