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Worker Charged With Selling Celeb's Medical Records

KTLA News

April 29, 2008, 7:40 PM PDT

A former UCLA Medical Center employee is under arrest, accused of selling the medical records of dozens of high profile patients to the media.

According to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday, 49 year old Lawanda Jackson is charged with one count of illegally obtaining health information for commercial advantage.

Officials say Jackson received $4,600 from the unidentified media outlet in exchange for the private medical information. The indictment does not identify the celebrities involved.

The checks written by the media outlet were paid to Jackson's husband.

Jackson faces up to ten years in prison if convicted. Her arraignment is scheduled for June 9.

The medical records of several high profile celebrities, including Britney Spears, Farrah Fawcett, Tom Cruise and Mariah Carey, among others, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times.

In 2001, while pop star Carey was a patient in UCLA's psychiatric unit, a nurse looked in her records, asked her for an autograph and showed it to teenage patients, according to one of her former colleagues, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Times. The nurse was terminated, said the source and another person familiar with the matter.

Hospital employees also were caught looking at the records of former Beatle George Harrison, who received chemotherapy at UCLA and died in 2001, and John Phillips, a co-founder of the band the Mamas and the Papas, who died the same year, according to a former senior UCLA official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. The official did not know what happened to the workers.

The California Department of Public Health has been investigating UCLA since March, when The Times reported that the hospital was firing 13 workers and disciplining 12 others for snooping on pop star Britney Spears.

Since then, the newspaper has reported that a different worker inappropriately accessed the electronic records of 61 patients, including actress Farrah Fawcett and California first lady Maria Shriver.

Fawcett's lawyers believe that the UCLA worker, administrative specialist Lawanda J. Jackson, leaked or sold the information to tabloids, including the National Enquirer. The Enquirer reported that Fawcett's cancer had returned last May before she had a chance to tell her son and closest friends.

In an interview with The Times earlier this month, Jackson denied selling any information, and said she reviewed the files because she was "being nosy." "Clearly I made a mistake, let's put it like that," Jackson told the paper. "I didn't leak anything or anything like that. It wasn't for money or anything. I was just looking."

Jackson resigned in July after UCLA initiated action to fire her.

UCLA has since announced it will take extra precautions to protect the privacy of employees and patients.

UCLA spokeswoman Roxanne Moster said some of the computer systems at UCLA require users to state the role they play in a patient's care. Others provide a warning that inappropriate access will be tracked and investigated. But some of the hospital's systems don't include warnings. A new system to be unveiled in the next few months will ask all users their reason for accessing specific patient records.

"Any breach, whether it's a movie star, a politician, a patient employee or any patient that comes to us is extremely disturbing," UCLA's officals say. "We need to get down to the bottom of it."

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