Curiosity killed the cat led these people to unemployment.
Five workers and a student research assistant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles have been fired over privacy breaches involving patient medical records, E! News confirms.
Names of the patients whose records were accessed were not released, however, a hospital official states that 14 patient records were "inappropriately accessed" between June 18 and June 24, and that the patients have been notified of the breach.
Kim Kardashian and Kanye West welcomed their daughter North West at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on June 15, just a few days before the incident occurred.
Kardashian and West were not immediately available for comment.
Four of those fired were employees of community physicians who have staff privileges at the hospital, one was a hospital medical assistant and one was an unpaid student research assistant. Three physicians violated hospital policy by giving out their hospital login information, which was subsequently used to access confidential patient records, according to the hospital.
Five of the fired workers looked at one record, and one worker looked at 14 records.
The people involved will be permanently barred from access to the hospital's records even if they eventually work for other health providers, according to the hospital's statement.
"In addition, although there is no indication to date from our investigation that any criminal acts were committed by the individuals involved in the privacy breaches, out of an abundance of caution Cedars-Sinai will be notifying the appropriate law enforcement agencies," the statement read.
The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act sets limits on what health information can be disclosed without a patient's permission. Violations can lead to fines of up to $50,000 per violation and, in some cases, to criminal charges.
"At Cedars-Sinai, we have a high standard for security, and in this case that standard was violated. Unauthorized access to any patient's medical record is, quite simply, completely unacceptable. In this case, a few individuals did not live up to our expectations.
"We have already begun to take appropriate actions, as this behavior was a clear violation of Cedars-Sinai policy. In addition, we are initiating additional training for our staff, and adding even more backup safeguards and redundancies to our preventive monitoring and computer security systems."
