David Rothenberg was the charge nurse on duty at Health Central Hospital in Ocoee on Nov. 27, 2009, as paramedics wheeled in Tiger Woods. The golfer had just crashed his Cadillac Escalade into a tree and fire hydrant outside his Isleworth home.
According to Rothenberg, within hours of Woods’s arrival, someone inside the hospital improperly gained access to the patient’s confidential medical records using the nurse’s computer login and password.
“They said it had something to do with Tiger Woods’ lab results and my name was on there,” said Rothenberg. “I’ll be honest with you, I was scared. And I said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.'”
In a defamation lawsuit filed this week against Health Central, the nurse claims he signed on to the hospital computer system and then walked away to tend to some other business.
“I minimized my screen, a common practice at the hospital,” said Rothenberg.
Rothenberg claims someone else must have approached his terminal, and within 10 minutes typed in “Tiger Woods,” as well as “Ronald Williams” and “Ernest Smith,” which the nurse has been told are aliases for the golfer.
Read more on ClickOrlando.com (via @LawandLit)
This case is worth noting for several reasons:
1. The hospital detected – but did not prevent – unauthorized access to patient records.
2. An employee was disciplined for snooping in patient records.
3. The employee may not have snooped (if his story is true), but by taking shortcuts such as minimizing the window instead of logging out, may have contributed to his own grief.
4. There is no indication as to whether the hospital’s security controls automatically time users out after a certain amount of inactivity. If the nurse’s report is accurate, the system also does not automatically log people out when a window is minimized.