Unity Hospital Firings 'Harsh but Justified' Says Star Tribune

The 32 workers Allina fired on May 6 for peeking at patients' electronic medical records——deserved to lose their jobs, says the Star Tribune in an editorial column published Saturday:

Allina's move was swift and appropriately harsh—especially given that these staffers had undergone training and were well-aware that they were violating the nation's health privacy law.

Allina said all 32 had no valid patient-care reason to look at the records, which  related to a March 17 mass-overdose in Blaine. A 19-year-old man died at after overdosing on a drug, 2C-E, that sent almost a dozen others to hospitals from the party. A 21-year-old man in the case.

The Star Tribune's editorial board notes in the column that although the local overdose patients weren't celebrities like more famous victims of digital medical-records snooping, they still stood to suffer from the release of their identities.

These patients are young, and they made a mistake. Having others in the community know they experienced a drug overdose could damage their reputations and potentially their future job prospects in these north suburban communities. Certainly if these employees' couldn't be trusted to safeguard this information at work, there's a strong chance that they may have shared what they learned with family and neighbors.

Comments at the Fridley Patch Facebook page immediately after the incident indicated that speculation in the community about the identities of the overdose victims was indeed intense.

"It's clear the staff didn't think through the harm their actions could cause," the Star Tribune comments. The editorial goes on to endorse changes to federal rules so that hospitals would have to notify patients in more of such data-breach incidents.

Read the full Star Tribune editorial .
Read the Fridley Patch article about the Allina firings .