UCLA workers fired for snooping into Britney Spears’ medical records

UCLA Medical Center is taking disciplinary action firing 13 workers and is disciplining others, including doctors,for unauthorized snooping into Britney Spears’ confidential files, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Hospital officials admitted in September 2005, employees were also caught prying into records, when Britney delivered Sean Preston at that hospital, and were summarly fired.

The hospital says that only Britney’s non-psychiatric records were accessible to staff. When anyone uses the system it’s easy to see what they’re looking at, because there’s an audit trail created with their PIN number. With such security in place one wonders why  the hospital can’t take the extra step of securing the records so only directly caring for a patient staff can access sensitive information.

The union for the hospital workers is of course upset that no doctors, are getting fired for the same offense as other medical staff.

Unlike UCLA, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has a system that lets them limit access to certain records only to people who are authorized to view them. The state Department of Public Health said late Friday that it had opened an investigation of the hospital.

Spokespeople for UCLA hospital claim this isn’t an issue of selling information to the tabloids, either.
They say “there is no evidence that any employee leaked information to the media or sold it,” and considering that her psychiatric records were in a separate system, there probably wasn’t much dirt there anyway.

Speculating instead that it’s human nature to be nosy and curious about a celebrity and maybe they want to be able to tell their friends, ‘I saw Britney’s records. I can’t help feeling though that selling information to the tabloids was a likely motive for some.