Having your employees find out that you are monitoring them surreptitiously doesn’t make for happy employees and may lead to legal problems in terms of surveillance laws and labor laws.
Having a patient privacy incident can be infinitely worse.
Managing to risk combining both can be a nightmare.
But that’s somewhat what happened recently in Iowa after a supervisor at University of Iowa attempted to surreptitiously monitor employees. The Associated Press reports:
Top University of Iowa medical officials told employees Wednesday they regretted a supervisor’s attempted use of a hidden baby monitor to determine whether secretaries were talking too much, but they claimed the device did not pick up any conversations or violate medical privacy law.
U of I Vice President for Medical Affairs Jean Robillard and Associate Vice President for Health Care Human Resources Jana Wessels said an internal investigation was continuing but had already determined “no conversations were transmitted” before the device was discovered in a department of urology clinic Monday and promptly removed.
Read more in the Des Moines Register.