Seattle Children’s ordered to release mold records in precedent-setting case

By Chris Ingalls
May 3, 2021

SEATTLE — A Washington state appeals court has upheld a lower court order requiring public health departments to release to KING 5 documents related to Aspergillus mold infections at Seattle Children’s hospital.

The decision appears to have ended the hospital’s year-and-a-half-long legal campaign to block the release of mold-related records by Public Health – Seattle & King County and the Washington State Department of Health (DOH).

KING 5 requested those public health records beginning in 2019 after Seattle Children’s closed its operating rooms and admitted publicly for the first time that it had an ongoing problem with Aspergillus mold infecting patients in its operating rooms.

Ultimately, hospital administrators admitted that seven young patients died from Aspergillus mold acquired in operating rooms at the hospital. More than a dozen other children have been sickened since 2001, and lawsuits claim that the number of deaths and infections could be even higher.

“We conclude that neither the quality improvement nor the infection reporting exemption prevents release of the records in this case,” the Division 1 Court of Appeals judges wrote, striking at the heart of the Seattle Children’s legal claims.

The hospital’s legal team claimed that the “quality improvement” – or QI – process allowed Seattle Children’s to keep certain records secret. The lawyers argued that the QI exemption, which bars the release of records to lawyers in lawsuits, the public and even patients, extended to records that were gathered and maintained by the county and state public health departments.