Months before UCLA Medical Center caught staffers snooping in the medical records of pop star Britney Spears, '70s TV icon Farrah Fawcett learned that a hospital employee had surreptitiously gone through records of her cancer treatments there, documents and interviews show.
Fawcett's lawyers said they are concerned that the information may have been subsequently leaked or sold to tabloids, including the National Enquirer.
Shortly after UCLA doctors told Fawcett that her cancer had returned -- and before she had told her son and closest friends -- the Enquirer posted the news on its website. Indeed, alarming headlines regularly cropped up in the Enquirer and its sister publication, the Globe, within days of Fawcett's treatments at UCLA.
UCLA terminated the employee who inappropriately reviewed Fawcett's records, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
This was the second time that Fawcett's privacy had been breached at UCLA. In a 2006 letter, one of her physicians, Gary Gitnick, informed Fawcett that a former hospital contractor had listed her name on his blog, "suggesting you are a patient and/or charitable donor of mine and UCLA."
As Fawcett, now 61, was being treated at UCLA, officials had been monitoring access to some records to guard against a privacy breach -- and found none, said Carole A. Klove, chief compliance and privacy officer for UCLA's health system.
But after the Enquirer ran its exclusive story, "Farrah's Cancer Is Back!," last May, Fawcett complained to another of her doctors, Eric Esrailian, and UCLA launched an investigation and looked at additional records systems. The hospital then discovered "multiple reviews" of her records by a worker who was not involved in Fawcett's treatment, Klove said.
Klove said the hospital found no evidence that the worker had either disclosed or sold the information she acquired. Klove would not identify the worker involved, citing privacy rules.
"Our patients need to know that they can trust that when they come to UCLA, that their information will be kept safe and secure," she said. "When and if we find inappropriate disclosures, we do take action, and that disciplinary action can include termination."
Fawcett, who appeared in the 1970s television series "Charlie's Angels," the TV movie "The Burning Bed" and a bestselling swimsuit poster, declined to comment.
