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UCLA staffer looked through Farrah Fawcett's medical records

Posted on April 2, 2008 by Dissent

Charles Ornstein reports in the Los Angeles Times:

Months before UCLA Medical Center caught its staffers snooping in the medical records of pop star Britney Spears, ’70s TV icon Farrah Fawcett learned that a hospital employee had surreptitiously gone through records of her cancer treatments there, documents and interviews show.

Fawcett’s lawyers said they are concerned that the information was subsequently leaked or sold to tabloids, including the National Enquirer.

Shortly after UCLA doctors told Fawcett that her cancer had returned — and before she had told her son and closest friends — the Enquirer posted the news on its website. Indeed, alarming headlines regularly cropped up in the Enquirer and its sister publication, the Globe, within days of Fawcett’s treatments at the UCLA hospital.

UCLA subsequently terminated the employee who inappropriately reviewed Fawcett’s records, according to one person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

This was the second time that information on Fawcett’s links to UCLA was inappropriately shared by someone connected with the hospital. In a 2006 letter, one of her physicians, Gary Gitnick, informed Fawcett that a former hospital contractor had listed her name on his blog, “suggesting you are a patient and/or charitable donor of mine and UCLA.”

[…]

But associates say the latest breach has left her shaken. She was scheduled to discuss the issue last month with Dr. David Feinberg, chief executive of the UCLA Hospital System, but had to postpone the meeting because she was not feeling well.

“She’s been invaded — and these are the people who she entrusted her life to,” said Craig J. Nevius, who is producing the upcoming documentary “A Wing and a Prayer,” which chronicles Fawcett’s battle with anal cancer and her efforts to protect her privacy from the tabloids.

Full story – Los Angeles Times

Category: Health Data

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