Two Nebraska Medical Center employees have been fired after inappropriately accessing the electronic medical record of Dr. Rick Sacra, the American medical missionary treated at the hospital for an Ebola virus infection.
Accessing such records is a violation of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, which protects the privacy of individually identifiable health information.
After The World-Herald asked about the firings Thursday night, the hospital confirmed them in a statement issued Friday. “Based on the results of the investigation conducted, two employees no longer work for the organization and other corrective action has been taken,” the hospital said in a statement.
Other hospitals across the country have dealt with similar privacy breaches involving high-profile patients’ records. A Los Angeles hospital fired six people after patient records were inappropriately accessed during several days in June 2013, a time period when reality TV star Kim Kardashian was in the hospital to give birth to her daughter with rapper Kanye West.
Sacra drew national media coverage as the third American medical missionary returned to the U.S. for treatment of the often deadly Ebola virus.
He was treated in the Omaha hospital’s biocontainment unit from Sept. 5 until Thursday.
The doctor, who contracted the virus while treating patients in Monrovia, Liberia, was released after tests performed this week showed he was virus free.
The Nebraska Medical Center said the breach was discovered during an audit of electronic medical records. Officials declined to provide details, including why the audit was done.
“While this is extremely uncommon,” the hospital statement said, “we have a zero tolerance for unauthorized access to patient information. In accordance with HIPAA regulations, Dr. Sacra was notified in person and in writing before his departure from the hospital.”
