Jury awards $2.3 million to victims of privacy breach
HIPAA Weekly Advisor, February 21, 2003
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A jury awarded close to $2.3 million February 5 to three women whose mental health treatment records were not kept private by West Virginia University Medical Corporation, according to the Associated Press (AP). The three women involved in the negligence case were identified in Monongalia Circuit Court only by their initials.
The corporation, also known as University Health Associates, fired a records clerk in July 1999 when one woman complained to the administrator of the medical school's department of behavioral medicine that her records had been wrongly disclosed.
Jurors awarded $766,200 to one woman, $762,000 to another, and $750,000 to the third. Circuit Judge Russell Clawges disallowed punitive damages against the corporation, ruling that the women did not prove that the clerk was "acting within the scope of his employment" in removing their records, taking them home and to local bars, and discussing them with people, reports the AP.
The corporation's physicians are all members of the faculty of the West Virginia University School of Medicine.
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