For more than a year, the Department of Health has fought to block Spotlight PA’s request for information. Judges rejected the agency’s arguments calling one claim “undeveloped.”
The newsroom specifically requested aggregate data — information that would not identify individual patients.information publicly available in the past.
The Department of Health still refused to provide the information. It sued Spotlight PA in Commonwealth Court, and a panel of three judges heard arguments in the case in May. In the same case, Commonwealth Court ruled in favor of the Department of Health on a separate matter. The court overturned a decision by the Office of Open Records that said the department failed to prove that certain written policies and procedures did not exist.