ML20031F471
| ML20031F471 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 09/30/1981 |
| From: | Thompson D NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE) |
| To: | Pfarrer S ALTICK & CORWIN |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8110190918 | |
| Download: ML20031F471 (4) | |
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,,,,gfe. ass -.g Mr. Stephen M. Pfarrer, Esq.
s Altick and Corwin 1300 Talbott Tower Dayton, Ohio 45402 Q
Dear Mr. Pfarrer:
1 This letter is in response to your July 30, 1981 application pursuant to 10 CFR 2.790 to have certain portions of the IE Investigation Report No. 30-02765/80-01 withheld from public disclosure. This will also acknowledge +,eipt of your letter dated September 23, 1981.
We have reviewed your request and for the reasons set forth in the Appendix to this letter have determined to withhold only those portions of the report identified in your request as I.A.I, the name of the individual and title in item I.A.2, and all references to hospitalization in the paragraphs identi-fied in items I. A.3, I. A.4, and I. A.5.
To the extent your response to the Notice of Violation also contains protected informaticn, it will be w'thheld from public disclosure.
Distributed copies of the Appendix will have protected information deleted.
Your remaining requests for withholding portions of the investigation report from public disclosure are hereby denied. As indicated in the Appendix, it is our intention to place in the publicly available file those portions of your affidavit which do not deal with protected infonnation.
However, if you wish, we will return the entire affidavit to you.
Please notify us within 30 days of your preference in this regard.
With respect to your corrective action discussed in your September 23 letter, we have no further questions as indicated in our letter of August 27, 1981, to Grandview Hospital.
Investigation Report No. 30-02765/80-01, amended as described above, will be placed in the Commission docket files available to the public thirty (30) days after the date of this letter.
Sincerely, Dudley Thompson, Director Enforcement and Investigations Office of Inspection and Enforcement Encl:
as stated IE:Eha.
IE:EI cE EI:D Metzger/bts Wessman Cyr Thompson 9/
81 9/;f/81 9/R 981 9/ (/81 M O g a ggo930 34-06904-o1 PDR
Distribution:
PDR NSIC TIC SECY VStello, IE RDeYoung, IE HThornburg, IE RWessman, IE TBrockett, IE JMetzger, IE CA FIngram, PA JMurray, ELD JLieberman, ELD KCyr, ELD JCreeks, AE0D JCummings, OIA Enforcement Coordinators, RI, RII, RIII, RIV, RV IE Files Central Files CP Book APuglise, CON EDO Rdg File Department of Health ATTN:
Director Radiological Health Program 246 North High Street P. O. Box 118 Columbus, 04 43216 i
APPENDIX IE reports in general are the records of inspections and investigations regarding our licensees.
As such they are NRC agency records and they are subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
They are indexed, stored, and retrieved by licensee names or license numbers--not personal identifiers.
Accordingly, such reports are not maintained in a system of records and t'ney do not involve the Privacy Act.
Grandview Hospital, in its application and affidavit, frequently cites the Privacy Act and NRC Manual Chapter 0204 as authority for withholding certain information from public disclosure.
These citations are not relevant to the investigatory report of June 10, 1981 or other IE reports.
For the subject report only the Freedom of Information Act under Exemptions 4, 6, and 7 could offer some relief from mandatory public disclosure.
In order to claim Exemption 4, Grandview Hospital would have had to identify information that would harm its competitive pesition if disclosed.
For Exemption 6, Grandview Hospital,culd have to have shown that the disclosure of certain information would cause substantial harm to an individual's personal privacy, i.e. that a disclosure would be an unwarranted invasion of that person's personal privacy.
Lastly, Exemption 7 is available to the NRC, not Grandview Hospital, if the agency feels that the disclosure of information would harm its enforcement action, identify a source who had requested and been promised confidentiality, or if the release of information would be an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
The Freedom of Information Act, as a disclosure statute, does not provide protection against the release of information that may prove to be embarrassing or against the release of allegations that were made but not proved.
Accordingly, the only portions of information in the June 10, 1981 report that Grandview Hospital has sub-stantiated as falling within an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act is the
- information.
Grandview Hospital argues that all references to " studies not being evaluated" are tied directly to the This argument is
(
tenuous at best.
It is true that several studies conducted at Grandview Hospital had not been evaluated and final reports had not been produced when our inspectors came to the hospital.
The reason for this lack of documentation may or may not have been tied to the r but j
since we are withholding all references to the N f i
h there is no need to withhold the references to " studies not being evaluated." These portions of the subject report, in and of themselves, never mention M and there is no basis to withhold them.
Grandview Hospital next argues that all references to the care of an iodine-131 patient must be deleted.
This again is without basis.
The patient is not identified in the report.
The NRC was investigating an allegation that proper radiation safety procedures for the handling of a patient treated with iodine-131 were not being followed at Grandview Hospital.
This allegation was 1
Information withheld as a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy.
l l
l l
. substantiated by the June 10, 1981 report with its discussion of that treat-ment and by interviews of hospital staff who were involved in the incident.
Grandview Hospital's claim that the NRC should use Exemption 7 to withhold this information is not accepted.
The Region III Office does not feel that the release of this information would interfere with any ongoing enforcement action and they feel that the allegations were substantiated by their report findings.
The fact that the NRC has not tried to cite Grandview Hospital for all possible infractions involved with the iodine-131 patient is no indication that the public would be better served by removing this type of information from the report.
On the contrary, the public has a right to know that the NRC is investigating all such allegations and taking appropriate regulatory action.
Accordingly, for the reasons discussed above, Grandview Hospital's remaining claims (that "all references to use of licensed material by an individual not named on the license" and " interviews concerning the CAPP study and the Levine Shunt study" should be deleted and/or amended from the June 10, 1981 report) are without basis and are hereby denied under 10 CFR 2.790 of the Commission's regulations.
Grandview Hospital's responses to the report, with respect to those items not withheld from public disclosure, will be maintained as part of the file and these responses contain all_the comments that Grandview Hospital would like to make regarding the NRC's reports and notices of viola-tion.
In this way, Grandview Hospital has a fair opportunity to provide its own version of the items mentioned in the NRC reports and notices of violation.
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