Texas Watch—Consumer Protection. Corporate Accountability. Citizen Advocacy.

Parkland Memorial Hospital’s decision not to release a taxpayer-funded performance report, despite its subsequent leak to the press, has raised the ire of patients’ rights advocates, but some attorneys say the hospital is within its rights to keep the report confidential.

The Parkland dispute centers around an approximately 300-page report prepared by Alvarez & Marsal Healthcare Industry Group , a New York-based firm that specializes in turnarounds of troubled institutions, interim management and performance improvement. Parkland spent about $7 million to hire the firm after inspections last summer uncovered systemic patient safety problems and CMS required the hospital to operate under external supervision or lose hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid funding that the hospital needs to operate.

Alvarez & Marsal spent about three months inside the hospital and prepared the report that was turned over to CMS in late January. It is the first of several performance reports expected as the hospital attempts to correct its problems.

Patients rights groups and some attorneys argue that Parkland, as a public institution, should release the report.

“Patients deserve as much information as they can get,” said Alex Winslow, executive director of consumer group Texas Watch, which monitors patient safety issues. “They have to make decisions about where they’re going to seek care, and they need to know if there are any dangers or pitfalls that they need to be aware of as they’re making those decisions.”

Read More: Dallas Business Journal