It’s VERY important that you, and your staff, understand that you cannot look at medical records for your friends or family without written permission.  In this case, despite repeated trainings, a nurse failed to understand that “looking at family records” is not acceptable.

Not only did she lose her job, she also opened her employer to HIPAA violation sanctions.

From Renal & Urology News:

Ms. P understood the importance of patient confidentiality and would never look in the records of patients that weren’t hers—with two exceptions. Ms. P’s mother and sister both had serious chronic conditions that frequently resulted in hospital visits over the years. Ms. P’s mother had Parkinson’s disease, was on numerous medications, and was prone to falls. Ms. P’s older sister, who lived with her, had Down syndrome. Ms. P would periodically look up her mother’s and sister’s health records on the hospital computer to get information or to access their treatment plans. She didn’t see anything wrong with this because it was her own family.

One of her colleagues, however, had noticed Ms. P looking at the records on more than one occasion, and anonymously reported her. The hospital’s HIPAA compliance officer began an investigation that revealed that Ms. P had accessed her mother’s charts on 44 separate occasions and her sister’s charts on 28 occasions. When the human resources director confronted her with the results of the investigation, Ms. P admitted that she had accessed the records, but that they were the records of her family members and therefore she didn’t see anything wrong with it.

“Did you need to access information from their medical records in order to do your job as a clinical affiliate in the cardiology department?” the human resources director asked sternly.

“No,” Ms. P replied. “They were not cardiology patients.”

She was fired that day. Angered by the loss of her job, Ms. P sought the advice of an attorney to see if she could sue the hospital for wrongful termination.

via No Exception to HIPAA Privacy Rules, Nurse Learns – Renal and Urology News.