Last November, 16 employees were fired from the Harris County Hospital District after being accused of violating patient privacy laws. However, the Houston Chronicle reports that five of those terminated employees were rehired last month and have been reinstated to their old positions.
The reinstatement of the hospital employees comes after a heated battle from Houston employment lawyers working with their union. The Harris County hospital employees did not realize that they were crossing the privacy line when they allegedly looked over a particular patient's medical records. The patient was Dr. Stephanie Wuest, a first-year Baylor College of Medicine resident assigned to Ben Taub General Hospital. Dr. Wuest was shot in a grocery store parking lot and became a patient at the hospital.
Fortunately, Dr. Wuest survived. After reassessing the intent of the federal patient privacy law violation, it was decided that the remaining 11 employees who were terminated will also be rehired. This was seen as a bittersweet victory among union members.
"It seemed a pretty harsh judgment in the first place," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett told a hospital employee union leader during a Commissioners Court meeting, as reported in the Houston Chronicle. "I'm sorry you had to go through it."
After being out of work for nearly four months, the employees will still not be receiving back pay over their wrongful termination. They're also now required to undergo training on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act -- a federal law that passed in 1996, which protects the privacy of patients' confidential medical information.
Related Resources:
- Wrongful Discharge Claims Skyrocket; What Makes a Termination Wrongful? (FindLaw's Free Enterprise blog)
- Ten Things to Think About: Wrongful Discharge (FindLaw)
- Find Houston Employment Lawyers (FindLaw)
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