Monte Sonnenberg reports:
A nurse at Norfolk General Hospital has been fired for inappropriately accessing patient files.
The hospital reported Tuesday that the privacy breach occurred from October, 2004, to March of this year. On Thursday, NGH notified 1,300 patients in writing that their privacy may have been violated.
Read more on Brantford Expositor.
If there’s a statement on NGH’s web site, I haven’t found it. The hospital reportedly is tightening up audit procedures to ensure only authorized personnel are accessing patient files. Given that this breach occurred over a 9-year period and went undetected until March of this year, I would hope so.
According to the news report:
“We take this very seriously,” Janine van den Heuvel, spokesperson for the hospital, said. “A breach of privacy is a breach of privacy. Why they did it is secondary to the fact that they shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. We view this as a one-off – an isolated incident.”
That may be true, but motivation is important. Was the employee just curious and snooping on people she knew, or was she stealing information for other purposes? Was the information she obtained shared with anyone else? Hopefully, NGH will eventually answer those questions.