An unnamed woman from Cincinnati filed a lawsuit against her ex-boyfriend, the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and a financial services employee of said hospital for allegedly posting her medical billing record containing sexual health history to a Facebook page purportedly about promiscuous women called “Team No Hoes.”
The woman claims that her syphilis diagnosis was exposed on said Facebook page, “absolutely devastating” her. She received bullying comments from the page and said to have lost friends because of the exposed sexually transmitted disease (STD), research reveals.
Report says the woman’s ex-boyfriend works at the UCMC, where she was being treated. The patient says she refused to tell her ex-boyfriend why she was there. The ex-boyfriend allegedly contacted another employee at the Financial Services department, whom he used to be romantically involved with and asked her to supply the medical records of the complaining patient. The woman claims her ex-boyfriend took a screenshot of the STD diagnosis and posted it to Facebook.
The woman seeks over $25,000 in legal damages, plus a promise from the hospital that such type of embarrassing exposure would no longer occur. The lawsuit was filed in Hamilton County court on Tuesday.
"To treat a sexually transmitted disease, you have a real expectation of privacy there that it won't be disseminated. That's what I think makes this case so egregious," Attorney Mike Allen, the patient’s lawyer, says to FOX19.
Meanwhile, the UCMC says it became aware of the incident after the patient alerted them.
“We took swift action and our investigation revealed that the record had been accessed by a Financial Services employee who did not have a business reason to do so. This employee had been fully trained and acknowledged her responsibilities under law and UC Health policy, but apparently accessed the billing record through a personal motivation,” UCMC president and CEO Lee Ann Liska says in a statement.
She reveals enforcing measures days after the patient’s complaint reached them. It terminated the employment of the financial services employee and also reported the incident to government authorities.
Atty. Allen blames the hospital for lack of proper supervision among its employees as well as for not adequately helping to identify the third employee involved in the retrieval of records.
While the lawsuit claims other UCMC employees were involved, the hospital management says otherwise.
“…no other employee was determined to have inappropriately accessed the record, nor would the assistance of any other employee have been required to acquire and distribute the screenshot in question,” she clarifies.
The UCMC also says it was outraged that an individual would use a position at the UCMC in an attempt to embarrass or bring harm to another individual. It also says the case is an isolated one, limited to the people identified in the lawsuit.
“…and by no means reflect the conduct of UC Medical Center associates, who are dedicated to serving thousands of patients annually and safeguarding the personal health information that has been entrusted to them. All associates have been reminded that the unauthorized access or viewing of medical records, or the unauthorized sharing of PHI, is a betrayal of that trust, and cause for immediate termination,” Liska says.
