Hard on the heels of the patient data theft at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center comes an indictment of an administrative specialist at UCLA Medical Center for snooping in celebrity medical records.
Lawanda Jackson, 49, was indicted April 9 on a charge of obtaining individually identifiable health information for commercial advantage. Actress Farrah Fawcett and her lawyers allege that Jackson leaked personal information about her battle with cancer to the National Enquirer and other tabloids.
Read the full LA Times story here. Jackson joins a short list of HIPAA indictees. The first was Richard Gibson, a Seattle cancer center employee who in 2004 was sentenced to 16 months in prison for stealing one patients' protected health information. The second was Leslie Howell of Oklahoma City, a mental health counselor indicted in August 2007 for selling over one hundred patient files. Dwight McPherson was likely the third, though I'm not completely certain he was charged under HIPAA as I've not seen the charging document, who is alleged to have sold tens of thousands of records. Jackson's indictment is made available by the LA times here.