HIPAA Violation : Dismisal
I am a young nurse that has only been practicing for 1 1/2 years. I love my job as a nurse, and I just got my dream job at a hospital I have always wanted to work at. I have been there for 4 months and I was called into HR for a meeting. They asked me why my name was on patients computer charts that I did not take care of. They informed me that was a HIPAA violation.
I was completely devastated as I thought HIPAA violations were more like wrongly giving information out, obtaining info to use against someone, or copying information and taking it with you. Those kind of things were what I thought of when I thought of HIPAA. I didn't look at charts to find someone I knew or anything like that.
I am a night nurse and I would just browse during downtime. I couldn't tell anyone the first thing about what was going on with any of the patients. I was just ignorant and didn't realize that I was violating something. They are talking about termination.
On appeal, Michelle argued that she was wrongfully terminated in violation of public policy. She claimed that rather than violating HIPAA, she strictly complied with its requirements, and at most, she engaged in “incidental disclosure,” which is not illegal under HIPAA.
It isn’t illegal to terminate employees for violating HIPAA—even if the violation is inadvertent or unintentional. Healthcare employers should remind employees about their HIPAA obligations and ensure that workers receive regular training on the proper handling of protected patient health information. Moreover, the failure to implement a uniform HIPAA policy could expose healthcare employers to liability.
I was completely devastated as I thought HIPAA violations were more like wrongly giving information out, obtaining info to use against someone, or copying information and taking it with you. Those kind of things were what I thought of when I thought of HIPAA. I didn't look at charts to find someone I knew or anything like that.
I am a night nurse and I would just browse during downtime. I couldn't tell anyone the first thing about what was going on with any of the patients. I was just ignorant and didn't realize that I was violating something. They are talking about termination.
On appeal, Michelle argued that she was wrongfully terminated in violation of public policy. She claimed that rather than violating HIPAA, she strictly complied with its requirements, and at most, she engaged in “incidental disclosure,” which is not illegal under HIPAA.
It isn’t illegal to terminate employees for violating HIPAA—even if the violation is inadvertent or unintentional. Healthcare employers should remind employees about their HIPAA obligations and ensure that workers receive regular training on the proper handling of protected patient health information. Moreover, the failure to implement a uniform HIPAA policy could expose healthcare employers to liability.
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