11 U.S.C. § 351 — Disposal of patient records

This section applies when a health care business goes bankrupt under Chapter 7, 9, or 11, and the trustee running the case doesn't have enough money to store patient records the way federal or state law requires. (1) The trustee must: (A) promptly publish a notice in one or more suitable newspapers saying that if patients or their insurance providers (where the law lets the insurer make the claim) don't come get their records within 365 days of the notice, the trustee will destroy them; and (B) during the first 180 days of that 365-day period, try to notify each patient and their insurer directly -- mailing notice to the patient's, a family member's, or a contact person's last known address, and to the insurance carrier. (2) If nobody claims the records by the end of the 365 days, the trustee must send a certified-mail request to each relevant federal agency asking permission to give the agency the records. No agency has to accept them. (3) If, after all that, the records are still unclaimed and no federal agency agrees to take them, the trustee must destroy the records -- by shredding or burning paper records, or by permanently erasing electronic records (magnetic, optical, or other) so they can't be recovered.