You may remember the Virginia Tech tragedy more than two years ago, when a student at the university, Seung-Hui Cho, opened fire one day on his classmates, killing 32 people and himself on April 16, 2007. What you may not have known is that Cho’s mental health records from when he was seen at the university’s counseling center went missing and were never located. Until now.
Mental health records for Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho that were missing for more than two years have been discovered in the home of the university clinic’s former director, according to a state memo shared with victims’ family members.
Cho killed 32 people on April 16, 2007, then committed suicide as police closed in. His mental health treatment has been a major issue in the vast investigation of the shootings, yet the records’ location had eluded authorities.
But Cho’s weren’t the only records found in the Dr. Miller’s — the former director’s — house:
A memo from the university […] says Cho’s records and those of several other Virginia Tech students were found last week in the home of Dr. Robert C. Miller. […] The memo said Cho’s records were removed from the Cook Counseling Center on the Virginia Tech campus more than a year before the shootings, when Miller left the clinic.
It’s not unusual for a clinic director, or even a therapist, to occasionally take some patient records home. It may be prohibited by clinic policy, or even state law as Gov. Kaine states in this article, but it’s done all the time.
What is unusual is that this clinic director never returned the records. You take them home overnight, work on them, and then bring them back the next day. Maybe a weekend if you have a lot of work to do. But not returning them before you leave your position with the clinic? That’s odd. Sure, it could’ve been an oversight or a simple disorganized mess they were buried under. But after the school shooting two years ago, if you even suspected you might have them, you might go looking for them in your piles.
That they are only now turning up does suggest something a little more than absent-mindedness.
Why are the records still important?
Miller is named as a defendant in the lawsuit filed by the families of slain students Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde. The suit claims Miller was told by Cho’s English professors about his disturbing behavior and by the school’s residential director that Cho had a history of erratic behavior, suicidal thoughts and had “blades” in his room.
The lawsuit claims Miller never passed that information on to either of the therapists from the counseling center who dealt with Cho during three 45-minute triage sessions in 2005.
Miller wouldn’t comment for the Associated Press article, so we only have one side of the story. But I found it odd that Miller wouldn’t have passed along pertinent information to therapists who worked under him when he had information given to him about a particularly troubled student like Cho apparently was.
It will be interesting to see how the lawsuit plays out, assuming it goes to trial. But we probably won’t have to wait that long. According to the article, Virginia plans to release “the records publicly as soon as possible — either by consent from Cho’s estate or through a subpoena.” And then we’ll have a whole ‘nother news cycle in which armchair psychologists can dissect the meanings found within such records.
And, naturally, people will find “signs” in those records that point to the possibility of the tragedy or that somehow foreshadowed it. This Monday-morning quarterbacking, however, is fraught with difficulties, as we can nearly always find data to support a later behavior or action a person took. It’s human nature to want to make sense of a tragedy such as this one, and to connect the dots.
But in real life, those dots don’t look at all connected. Without making excuses for anyone, university counseling centers see hundreds of troubled students every year. As an expected but money-losing service provided by most colleges and universities, counseling centers are usually not terribly well-funded or have access to all the resources they typically need or want. Perhaps things have changed since I worked at a public university’s counseling center many years ago while in training, but they are also not well-equipped to handle serious mental disorders either (like depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder). This probably varies from university to university, but at the large university I was at, they referred most of those kinds of individuals to therapists within the community.
I have no idea why Miller took these records from the clinic and never returned them, even during the publicity of the investigation in the aftermath of the shootings. I suspect we’ll find out why shortly, though.
Read the full article: Va. Tech gunman’s mental records found in home
13 comments
Dr. Miller had access to the Cook Counseling services upto 2008. His story is fishy, he could have taken them after the Vir. Tech Shooting. It would also be helpful for the Governor of Virginia to authorize the release of Cho’s Toxicology Report.
Considering the information contained within medical records are the property of the client/patient, I cannot think of ANY reason why any person should be bringing client charts home. Its not theirs to take to a private residence and I hardly think most clients/patients would say its okay for any doctor to take the chart out of the office. If you have not finished with a chart, leave it for tomorrow or stay late to work on it.
Hopefully this incident will lead to some new federal laws prohibiting individuals from taking client/patient charts home. If so, it would be unfortunate that the government would have to come up with a law that would direct doctors on how to act reasonably and with common sense – something they should be doing on their own.
While HIPAA does not expressly forbid individuals from taking charts home, it does make note that charts should be kept secured at all times, no one other than the provider have access to it, and there is plan of action in case the chart needs to be accessed in the event of an emergency.
While its possible to secure the chart in a private home, and limit access to it, in the case of an emergency, other individuals would not necessarily have access to the chart (or even know where the chart is). This is a violation of the HIPAA standards.
Taking charts out of the office to places such as a private residence places a high risk to the integrity, confidentiality, and access to the PHI.
This is not a reasonable standard of care practice and should not be passed over as being “okay”
if it’s so fishy, why wouldn’t he destroy the records instead of turning them over?
The records could have been destroyed,.. and replaced. like I said, its fishy since Dr. Miller “was not” Cho’s treating therapist. I agree with Dr. Wayne, and the attorneys, these records should never have left the office, and if Dr. Miller violated HIPPA, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!!!
Lots of questions here: In how many places in this therapist’s house or garage does he store documents? How many documents does he store? Where exactly did he find the documents? How in the world was he unable to find them in response to investigation by police but able to find them when facing the prospect of testifying under oath? If I were the plaintiffs’ lawyers, I would ask for a video-taped inspection of the therapist’s home so that a jury and judge could evaluate the plausibility of his prior claim that he did not know where the records were. If I were a settling plaintiff, I would seek to rescind my settle agreement on the basis of fraudulent inducement.
I guess this is something else to ask when seeking a therapist. Will you take my medical record to your house? If so, I would like to opt out.
Claire, I do not know if you were half-joking or not, but the generality of your statement is a valid one. Clients most certainly have a right to ask their therapists how they (the therapist) protect their (the clients) information. This is especially true in today’s age of electronic transmission and storage of data.
However, that also means that client’s need to educate themselves (to some extent, since the therapist should be able to explain to the client how and why they chose the method in which they store data) so that they can be better able to ask the appropriate questions.
Dr. Wayne, I agree. There are several questions that I would ask. For example, I wouldn’t talk with a mental health professional who utilized an electronic medical record.
Also, I never thought to ask about the taking my records home thing. I wish I had thought to ask, because I would have voiced my opposition to it. I don’t want my therapy records lying on a therapist’s coffee table at home. It needs to stay at the office. I work with medical records, and I don’t take the patients’ info home with me to catch up on my work. I either stay late, sometimes very late, to finish what I’m doing or it waits until the next day. It’s the respectful thing to do.
If Dr. Miller was truly devious as is being insinuated, he could have easily destroyed these records and they would have NEVER turned up. His public reputation and carrer would still be intact. He removed these files, along with his personal filed, when he left the counseling center for a diffrent campus job. The very fact that he turned in these files as soon as he discovered them, says something positive about his character.
I don’t really care if he was being devious or not. I do care that he is so sloppy with patients’ personal information that he thinks it’s okay to take it home and let it gather dust. I will be making some phone calls to find out about my past medical & mental health records. They better be where they’re supposed to be.
Ummm, its much worse/deeper than just a simple case of “oops”….
Dr. Robert C. Miller served as a “substitute Incident Commander” for the response team dispatched to deal with the aftermath of the April 16 shootings. This information is confirmed through Dr. Miller’s own resume, in which he lists the incident under the heading, “Administrative, Consultation and Leadership Experience.”….
2007 Member, Human Resources response team to April 16 shootings. Served as substitute Incident Commander 2007-present Member, ADA Executive Committee, Virginia Tech
http://www.NaturalNews.com/z026682_Chi_health_mental_health.html
The lawsuit filed by parents of two of the students who were killed had Miller reveal that he had been fired from his position as Director of Cooke Counseling Center after an external investigation was conducted. Now, a judge has cleared the way for the lawsuit to proceed after having found that Miller is not subject to immunity. It is a good thing that we may finally have a chance to discover how well he performed his fiduciary duties as the Director of Cooke Counseling Center. Taking files home, missing files, being relieved of his position …. are these symptoms of his leadership abilities?