Tennessee Hospital Workers Charged with HIPAA Violation After Selling the Names and Information of Patients

Five former Methodist Hospital employees were indicted by a grand jury for conspiring with a man to unlawfully disclose patient information in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996.

The HIPAA law’s provisions make it a crime to disclose patient information, or to obtain patient information with the intent to sell, transfer, or use such information for personal gain. The law was enacted by Congress in 1996 “to create national standards to protect sensitive patient information from being disclosed without a patient’s knowledge or consent.”

Between November 2017 and December 2020, a man named Roderick Harvey, 40, paid the five former employees – Kirby Dandridge, 38, Sylvia Taylor, 43, Kara Thompson, 30, Melanie Russell, 41, and Adrianna Taber, 26 – to provide him with names and phone numbers of Methodist patients who had been involved in motor vehicle accidents and sold the information to third persons including personal injury attorneys and chiropractors, according to the indictment cited in a press release by the Western District of Tennessee U.S. Attorney’s Office.

A maximum penalty of five years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release are carried by a conspiracy charge, the U.S. Attorney’s Office notes. In addition, the five former employees were each charged with separate violations of disclosing the information to Harvey in violation of HIPAA, which carries a maximum penalty of one-year imprisonment, a $50,000 fine, and one year of supervised release.

Harvey was also charged for his role in unlawfully disclosing patient information, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He was charged with seven counts of obtaining patient information with the intent to sell it for financial gain on various dates between November 12, 2017, and September 7, 2019, with each charge carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release.

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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Methodist Healthcare South Hospital ” by Thomas R Machnitzki. CC BY 3.0.

Yes, Every Kid

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3 Thoughts to “Tennessee Hospital Workers Charged with HIPAA Violation After Selling the Names and Information of Patients”

  1. TheMiner

    Yes, and should start by hammering local officials and let’s see whether it will be passed up the line to the politicians who backed all of the nonsense and start punishing those medical and political for their part

  2. Tom Richardson

    And yet many were forced to disclose Death Jab status as a condition of employment? What part of HIPAA did this not violate?

    1. Joe Blow

      Tom – You got that right!

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