On August 25, 2014, Virginia Lawyers Weekly headlined “Judges allow disclosure of medical ‘metadata’,” covering favorable rulings that Mr. Waterman received in a pair of Peninsula patient fall cases, Eason v. Sentara CarePlex Hosp., No. CL12000470, Letter Op. (Hampton May 29, 2014) and Peck v. Riverside Hosp., Inc., No. CL1400873V-04, 6/23/14 “Privilege” Hearing Order (Newport News Aug. 5, 2014). The article quoted Mr. Waterman extensively about what is coined as “a cutting edge issue nationally”. Id. at 2.
“Metadata is lost when only ‘printed’…. Typically, [medical malpractice] lawyers are being provided paper printouts. Right there, you’re losing some information,” Virginia Lawyers Weekly quoted Mr. Waterman. “The real brass ring is the so-called ‘read-only’ version of the [electronic medical record] file.” Id.
Virginia Lawyers Weekly reported “Riverside now is voluntarily providing audit trails and underlying metadata in electronic format in a separate case” of Mr. Waterman, id.; which involves an alleged wrongful death. Virginia Lawyers Weekly also questioned whether the Virginia Supreme Court would reach the substantive merits of the metadata assignment of error in Temple v. Mary Washington Hosp., Record No. 131754, based on oral argument in June bogging down on a threshold dispositive “procedural issue”, id.; potentially leaving Mr. Waterman’s metadata decisions as Virginia’s precedent.
