Whenever we have a celebrity or an employee admitted to our hospital or one of it’s satellite facilities, our beloved IT is alerted — you know, my department, where we have SecurIDs that are apparently not dog-proof and 15 sign ons just to have access to our own computers. Our super-secretive, overly paranoid, won’t-share-any-information-with-anyone-but-complains-that-everyone-comes-to-him-for-help Database Administrator then begins the process of running daily reports on who accessed the celebrity’s or employee’s patient record. Oh, and to further secretize things, the celebrity is given a super-duper code name that looks really obvious on the Bed Census. Anyway, the idea is that all of the names of the people who accessed the record are checked to verify that they should have been doing something with the record — like they were the nurse on duty or the patient’s doctor or were checking the diet order, etc.
We have to do all of that because of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). That’s that piece of paper the doctor’s offices all make you sign these days reminding you about how they won’t tell anyone anything about you unless you tell them too and in fact they’re going to be a real pain in the ass about releasing any records to anyone without you signing a buttload of papers in person and indicating exactly who the records are going to and making a blood offering under a full moon. HIPAA is a federal law that protects the privacy of patients so you have the government to thank for both the comfort in knowing that your records are safe and the pain in your ass when you try to get copies of those records to take to another doctor or hospital.
And here’s the thing…they’ve been drilling this patient confidentiality/HIPAA stuff into our heads for at least the last 10 years. We’ve had special classes in it. We’ve been told all the rules. Everyone from housekeeping to nurses on the units to IT to Administration in every hospital big and small from sea to shining sea in the U.S. of A. has been told and knows the drill. We aren’t even allowed to talk about patients medical statuses to people who aren’t involved or aren’t approved to know.
So, why do I bring this up?
Because 27 employees at Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, N.J. could not help themselves from finding out about George Clooney’s health and welfare by taking a gander at his medical records themselves last month after his motorcycle accident with girlfriend Sarah Larson. They’ve been suspended. It’s unclear if they were involved in leaking his medical status to the press. What they did was completely unprofessional, not to mention illegal. George Clooney is being incredibly nice about the whole thing as he’s said he doesn’t think they need to be suspended for it. The hospital is incredibly lucky it isn’t being sued.
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