Octuplets: Nadya’s medical files breeched - 15 workers fired

March 31, 2009

(3-31) Octuplets: Updated list of posts

Not sure why this is a headline - probably because they tracked them down and actually fired them. They did it with Britney Spears and Farah Fawcett and George Clooney and probably a whole lot more. Britney Spears was worse because she was on a psychiatric hold. Thing is anyone in the hospital with proper access to the main computer can get some degree of access to a patient’s records. It all depends on how well hers were protected - specifically in the Medical Records Department, where charts are usually filed just on a shelf. Since workers were repeatedly warned, I imagine hers was protected to some degree.

Then there’s the issue of whether the charts were dictated. If so, a non healthcare professional is responsible for listening and then typing it up. And there’s no way they can keep track of that on paper.

According to CBS 2 News LA, 23 employees were investigated for violations of health care privacy law - HIPAA — 15 were fired and the other 8 received “significant” punishment. Doesn’t say how many times the information was accessed or what exactly was accessed or who did it. It also doesn’t say whether the State of California is looking into it.

Kaiser Permanente Spokesman JIM ANDERSON:

Despite the notoriety of this case, to us this person is a patient who deserves the privacy that all our patients get.

They had set up safeguards back in December when she first got admitted.

Even though no one knew she was there, they knew she was going to have a lot of babies. The extra monitoring helped determine that there were people who looked at the records who did not have reason to do so.

He said he doesn’t think any info was shared with the media, based on the results of their inquiry. How can he be certain?

Nadya’s lawyer Jeff Czech said she’s not going to sue. He said he thought folks might have been looking for information on the sperm donor.

CZECH:

She trusts Kaiser and they said they’d look into it. We feel that they’re on top of it and are taking care of it.

They probably just made a three way deal: Nadya doesn’t sue the hospital - the hospital doesn’t bill Nadya or the State - the State doesn’t investigate and sanction the hospital.