Dr Brooks has an ordinary email address on his website, but like many doctors, he doesn’t answer emails sent to him, at least by his patients. But Dr Brooks is different in that he claims there’s a perfectly good reason for this – he doesn’t get them. He’s so sneaky that he has an email set up so that it detects when an email is from a patient and screens it out – not that there’s anything on his website to warn his patients of this. At least this is what he told the NSW Privacy Commissioner when one of his patients complained to her that Dr Brooks had been blatantly breaking the law by ignoring a number of email requests made to him over a number of months for copies of health records.
But we think he’s lying, for two reasons. Firstly, when an email was sent to him by a patient which involved some money for Dr Brooks, it was acknowledged and responded to VERY promptly indeed. And secondly, when some technical people were asked whether it was possible for an ordinary email address to be set up in the way he claimed, they couldn’t stop laughing.
And despite new requests being made by fax and “snail mail” – the methods Dr Brooks has stipulated – he’s still refusing to provide copies of some health records.
So, readers, that’s what it’s like dealing with Dr Brooks. Hopefully doctors like this can be avoided like the plague.
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