Escambia County Alabama Community Hospitals

The covered entity (CE), Escambia County Alabama Community Hospitals, Inc. dba Atmore Community Hospital, discovered that a unit secretary viewed medical records of 1,090 patients from the emergency department, outside the scope of her job duties. The records included protected health information, such as patients’ names and clinical information. The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. In response to the breach, the CE sanctioned the involved employee, reviewed its record audit procedures, and implemented an additional access control mechanism for patient records from the emergency department. In addition, the CE retrained all employees. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions listed above. In this case, the sanctions included termination of employment.