Hunter
07/25/24
A former University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics resident who pleaded guilty to illegally obtaining personal health information of multiple patients has agreed to plea to a lesser charge.
Iowa Capital Dispatch reports the former Iowa City resident, 34-year-old Dr. Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez Roman, who also worked in a Cedar Rapids hospital, was indicted in April on a charge of wrongfully obtaining individually identifiable health information under false pretenses for personal gain or malicious harm. He recently agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge that omits the motivation of personal gain or malicious harm.
The doctor admitted that in 2022 he obtained patient medical information on a girlfriend without authorization and for no legitimate purpose. He also posted a photo on Snapchat of a patient with their rectum clearly hanging out of the body. He originally told an investigator that he shared the photo because he was competing in a “Puerto Rico’s Sexiest Doctor of the Year” contest and wanted to prove he was a physician. Roman later admitted that he had no legitimate medical reason to take the picture and sending it to others.
Last year, Roman told the Iowa Board of Medicine in a letter that he had accessed confidential medical records of two individuals he was seeing.
Hernandez-Roman could be sentenced to no more than five years of imprisonment and a fine of no more than $250,000. A sentencing date has yet to be set.