California first lady Maria Shriver is
among more than 30 celebrities and other high-profile patients who had
their confidential records breached at UCLA Medical Center, medical
officials said.
The woman responsible, whose name was not released,
is the same employee who sneaked into actress Farrah Fawcett's medical
records, officials told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.
That
worker was fired in May 2007 after UCLA learned of the widespread
breaches, but patients were not notified, the hospital said.
In
all, the woman improperly looked at 61 patients' medical records in
2006 and 2007, according to state and local medical officials. These
included Fawcett, Shriver, and 31 other politicians, celebrities and
other well-known people, the paper said. Names of the other patients
were not disclosed.
The head of the UCLA Hospital System, Dr.
David Feinberg, apologized for the breaches and said the woman behind
them had been a "rogue" employee.
Fawcett is battling cancer.
Her attorney, Kim Swartz, said last week that after an employee at the
hospital accessed Fawcett's medical records, details about her
treatment showed up in the National Enquirer.
But Feinberg told
the Times that the hospital reviewed the fired employee's e-mails and
phone calls and found no evidence any confidential medical information
was shared inappropriately.
After being informed last week that
his wife's medical records had been accessed, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger issued a statement saying that "a breach of any
patient's medical records is outrageous." Besides being California's
first lady, Shriver is a former NBC newswoman and a member of the
Kennedy family.
The secretary of the California Health and
Human Services Agency, Kim Belshe, said Sunday that her agency is "very
concerned about what appears to be a pattern of repeated violations."
The state will be taking action against UCLA, she said.
UCLA
did not let state officials know about the breaches last year. Kathleen
Billingsley of the Center for Healthcare Quality said a state
investigator on Friday came across a document with the names of those
patients affected.
Feinberg said hospital officials initially
concluded that alerting authorities and the patients involved was not
required. They are reconsidering whether to notify the patients because
of the recent disclosures, he said.
The news of the snooping
into Fawcett's medical records became public on Wednesday, a few weeks
after the hospital announced that several employees were fired for
peeking at pop star's Britney Spears' files.
Schwarzenegger said he called on his administration to act after the Spears case became public last month.