LifeLock

Albert Einstein said curiosity is more important that intelligence, but apparently 23 employees at Kaiser Permanente got that backwards. Fifteen workers have been fired and eight disciplined for violating California health care privacy laws by peeking into Nadya “Octomom” Suleman’s medical records.

Hospital spokesman Jim Anderson said Kaiser Permanente has warned employees without a legitimate medical purpose to stay away from the records. Anderson also said the company notified the state of the violations. His comments were made during an interview with The Associated Press.

Kaiser’s data breach record is less than stellar.

• In February, the names, addresses, birthdates, and Social Security numbers of 30,000 company employees were discovered on a computer disk in the possession of a man arrested for other crimes.
• November 2006, a laptop containing the names, employee ID numbers, birthdates, gender and physician information of 38,000 patients was stolen from an employee’s car.
• July 2006, another laptop was stolen along with the names, phone numbers and patient ID numbers of 160,000 HMO members.
• June 2005, Kaiser was fined $200,000 for posting confidential medical and personally identifying information of 140 members on the Internet.

This is only the latest in a long string of similar violations of patients’ medical records, including several that affected celebrities who received treatment at UCLA hospitals. Farrah Fawcett, Britney Spears and California first lady Maria Shriver were also victims of similar violations.

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