Depending on your jurisdiction, the main barrier to maintaining a successful medical malpractice wrongful death lawsuit may be access to medical information about the decedent. While a living person can obviously waive physician-patient privilege so as to allow access to medical records for the purposes of a lawsuit, the privilege does not die along with the patient. Usually, a physician is not allowed to release medical information about a patient without his or her permission. Some states have laws that make specific exceptions for the personal representative of a deceased person's estate, the deceased person's next of kin, or a surviving spouse, which enable those persons to waive the physician-patient privilege and obtain the necessary medical information. In other states, however, the records may be more difficult to obtain, and may only be released to another healthcare provider. Typically, however, the attorney handling the wrongful death case will be able to access the medical records at some point, even if only to assess the merits of a potential wrongful death lawsuit.