I worked at a hospital as a director of a department treating patients. My email and internet access password was connected to download programs we used to access patient records. I left that job last May and I have recently found that they hae my email address still open using my password for patient records access. I found out because you can send me an email and not get a return notice that the email address is no longer valid. Persons will email me and since I am not responding it appears I am incompetent. I wonder if they are also possibly replying to emails sent to me? Can this be legal?

Contact the HR department. Ask them why the e-mail is still available.

I used to work in HR and we often kept the email addresses of "critical" people - those who signed up for services on the web or software. The boxes were periodically checked and dispersed to the appropriate people. Over a short period there is a transition of people who would be emailing for information or who had questions or whatever. Typically, over time or as soon as the person hired seems to be staying we would transfer over the information to the new person.

I would contact HR to make sure this is being done because there is nothing worse then getting complaints after you leave a job! (happened to me, 3 weeks after I quit my job an employee stormed into my bosses office demanding to know why I wasn't getting back to him - funny)

Yes, the company I used to work for, would leave higher profile positions email open till they stopped getting mail and often forgotten and left open for?? We had the messages forwarded to the new person to deal with it.

And since you don't work for this firm, how can they think you are not doing the job correctly. But the company owns the email address and have no duty to close it.

Ah... see but I contract independanty now. And did contract part time independently then so it is those who are looking to me from the outside I'm having problems with.
I had complaints from the travel department for one company I work for stating I would not respond to requests. Until this week I was stumped on what they were talking about.
I mean realistically, if some one used the lame excuss I didn't get your email, I would initialy think they were slacking. Especially since I keep read reciepts and many companies I work with do. Could loose allot of money if this continues.
But I notified them of the issue, and reminded them that I sent out change of email address back in May. Hope that helps.
Thanks for all your advice.

You can contact HR as suggested above but if you know the hospitals' system administrator it'll be much more quick and easier to get your e-mail removed from the system;)