Every Star has an Achilles heel

Employees of a New Jersey hospital have been either reprimanded or suspended – depending on the source – for peeking at the medical records of actor George Clooney, who was involved in a motorcycle accident there.

I worked on-site at a hospital a few years back, and anyone with a computer logon could check anyone's record. The fact that many hospital employees (I actually worked for a transcription service but had an office at the hospital) received their care from physicians within the hospital network because they could do so more economically made for a situation that I felt compromised their privacy. I remember an especially messy incident involving an HIV diagnosis. The gossip was so thick that it became a Human Resource issue, and the employee involved was understandably furious.

Then there was the incident at the Mayo Clinic when I worked there, where two transcriptionists were terminated for gossiping in the ladies room about the health issues of a famous patient that one of them had transcribed.

And does anyone remember that actor Anthony Perkins' (the original Norman Bates of Psycho) lab work was leaked to the media, making it public that he had AIDS? I thought that was awful.

I believe that many celebrities use aliases when being admitted to the hospital for surgeries or to give birth. Any prominent person who finds himself or herself being treated at a hospital ER for an accident or sudden illness would be a fool to tell the treating physician anything more than he/she needs to know to provide care, like if they're taking or are allergic to any medications that might make a prescribed medication counterproductive (or worse).

George Clooney strikes me as being nobody's fool. The actor did not complain about the situation and has spoken out in its aftermath, declaring that suspension seems like excessive punishment. (Spoken like a man who knows he did not share anything of any interest to his treating physician).

One of the unsubstantiated stories circulating is that the snooping employees were suspended for four weeks without pay. That does seem excessive; however, I can't help thinking that if these employees were suspended for three days with no pay and it was publicized, it might go a long way toward preserving the privacy of other famous people. A hospital employee will surely think twice before selling someone's private information to a tabloid if they are in danger of losing their job and any future means of employment in the medical field. The tabloids don't pay that much.

What do you think?