O.C.G.A.

O.C.G.A. § 16-10-94.1 (2019)

Willful destruction, alteration, or falsification of medical records

✓ O.C.G.A. — 2019 edition (Public.Resource.Org Release 73)

Code text and O.C.G.A. statutory annotations on this page reflect the 2019 Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Public.Resource.Org Release 73, 2019-08-21; public domain per Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). The Syfert case-law annotations in Notes of Decisions, below, are current.

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(a) As used in this Code section, the term: (1) ‘‘Patient’’ means any person who has received health care services from a provider. (2) ‘‘Provider’’ means all hospitals, including public, private, osteopathic, and tuberculosis hospitals; other special care units, including podiatric facilities, skilled nursing facilities, and kidney disease treatment centers, including freestanding hemodialysis units; intermediate care facilities; ambulatory surgical or obstetrical facilities; health maintenance organizations; and home health agencies. Such term shall also mean any person licensed to practice under Chapter 9, 11, 26, 34, 35, or 39 of Title 43. (3) ‘‘Record’’ means a patient’s health record, including, but not limited to, evaluations, diagnoses, prognoses, laboratory reports, X-rays, prescriptions, and other technical information used in assessing the patient’s condition, or the pertinent portion of the record relating to a specific condition or a summary of the record. (b) Any person who, with intent to conceal any material fact relating to a potential claim or cause of action, knowingly and willfully destroys, alters, or falsifies any record shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

History

(Code 1981, § 16-10-94.1, enacted by Ga. L. 1988, p. 412, § 1.)

Annotations

Code Commission notes. - Pursuant to Code Section 28-9-5, in 1988, ‘‘under’’

was substituted for ‘‘Under’’ in the second sentence of paragraph (a)(2).

Notes of Decisions

Cited in 4 cases (3 in the last 5 years), 1996–2026 · leading case: Pope v. Goodgame, 478 S.E.2d 636 (Ga. Ct. App. 1996).

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Pope v. Goodgame, 478 S.E.2d 636 (Ga. Ct. App. 1996). · cites it 2× “Plaintiffs contend that failure to give their requested charge on alteration of medical records based on OCGA § 16-10-94.1 was error and mandates a new trial.”

Helen Ross-Stubblefield v. Laura L. Weakland (Ga. Ct. App. 2021). · cites it 6× “A jury found in favor of the defendants, and the plaintiffs now appeal, arguing that the trial court erred in admitting medical records of a non-party treating physician because those records were altered after the litigation began, were made with an intent to conceal relevant…”

Emory Healthcare, Inc. v. Jason H. Harms (Ga. Ct. App. 2026). · cites it 2× “25 OCGA § 16-10-94.1(b). 26 See Jastram, 276 Ga.”

Kaci C. Myers v. United States (11th Cir. 2023). “Nieves’s documentation errors constituted fraudulent concealment and falsification of medical records and that they violated various state and federal laws, in- cluding O.C.G.A. §§ 16-10-94.1, 16-10-20, and 51-6-2 and 18 U.”

— 16-10-94.1(b) — 1 case

Emory Healthcare, Inc. v. Jason H. Harms (Ga. Ct. App. 2026). “25 OCGA § 16-10-94.1(b). 26 See Jastram, 276 Ga.”

Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.