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upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

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upstart [soylentnews.org] writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8192:

Largest Hospital System In The US Threatens To Fire Doctors & Nurses For Telling The Truth About COVID-19 Disaster [techdirt.com]:

Largest Hospital System In The US Threatens To Fire Doctors & Nurses For Telling The Truth About COVID-19 Disaster

Failures [techdirt.com]

from the this-seems-truly-fucked-up dept

Last week we talked about just how insane it was that hospital administrators were threatening and/or firing [techdirt.com] doctors and nurses for speaking out publicly on social media about just how unprepared America's healthcare system has been for the COVID-19 pandemic -- and now we find out it gets even worse. Business Insider has seen a memo sent around by the country's largest hospital provider, HCA Healthcare, noting that they changed their social media guidelines [businessinsider.com] just as the pandemic got really cooking, to tell those healthcare professionals on the frontline that telling the truth in public might cost them their jobs:

HCA Healthcare, which has 185 hospitals in 20 states, sent an email to employees on March 24 that added new guidelines for social media and media inquiries during the pandemic. The email said HCA employees could get disciplined or even fired for posting information on social media about its policies about treating patients with COVID-19, the illness caused by this coronavirus. The health system also barred employees from speaking to journalists about the virus without explicit permission from HCA's communications director.

One nurse, Jhonna Porter, told Business Insider that HCA Healthcare had already suspended her for violating these new guidelines and did so retroactively, for her activity before March 24. Porter, a charge nurse at West Hills Hospital in California, said HCA Healthcare suspended her without pay on March 25, a day after sending the email updating its social-media policy.

The situation with Porter seems particularly ridiculous. She was talking in a private Facebook group with her colleagues, and that's why she got suspended:

Porter said HCA Healthcare issued her suspension over a phone call and told her it was for talking to her colleagues in a private Facebook group about a floor the hospital had turned into one for treating patients with COVID-19. Porter said the health system said her social-media activity was a violation of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, commonly known as HIPAA, which mandates that healthcare workers keep patient information private.

Porter said her post did not name the health system or mention sensitive patient information. Rather, she said, she was being punished for being a whistleblower who called out equipment shortages and other hospital issues.

It is true that HIPAA rules are (often overly) strict, and that does limit what healthcare providers can share, but this seems like trying to pin a false HIPAA violation on what is actually embarrassing whistleblowing in the midst of a pandemic.

It's ridiculous how many times it needs to be said, but, in the midst of a pandemic, accurate and transparent information sharing is the key to actually getting a handle on this and minimizing the damage. That our hospitals are doing the opposite is not just scary, it's literally putting lives in danger. Meanwhile, I'll just toss this paragraph here:

HCA Healthcare is publicly traded, with backing from the private-equity firms Bain and KKR, which took the system private in a $33 billion deal in 2006, at the time the largest leveraged buyout in history. Its market capitalization on Monday was nearly $30 billion.

You don't say.

Filed Under: doctors [techdirt.com], hospitals [techdirt.com], nurses [techdirt.com], transparency [techdirt.com], truth [techdirt.com]
Companies: hca healthcare [techdirt.com]

Original Submission