Octoworkers Fired for Snooping on Suleman

Fifteen workers were terminated or resigned after breaching Octomom Nadya Suleman's medical file

What does a new mother have to do to get a little privacy? You know, other than not sign an exclusive deal to record her life for a website, make multiple appearances on Dr. Phil or affiliate herself with Gloria Allred?

As has befallen Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, George Clooney and Farrah Fawcett before her, Octomom Nadya Suleman is the latest (pseudo) celeb to have her privacy breached in the wake of a hospital stay, as Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center today announced that 15 hospital workers have been let go, voluntarily and otherwise, and another eight disciplined for attempting to sneak peaks at Suleman's medical history.

Two of the staffers were fired, while 13 opted to resign in lieu of termination.

Kaiser Permanente's SoCal media relations director Jim Anderson said the staffers had accessed Suleman's file "without having a good reason to do so," but that an internal investigation by the hospital found that none of the offending workers provided information from the medical records to the media.

In other words, they peeked, but they didn't leak. At least they haven't yet.

"Despite the notoriety of this case, to us this person is a patient who deserves the privacy that all our patients get," Anderson said, who added that the hospital had already reported the breach of privacy to the state's Department of Public Health.

While Anderson did not disclose the occupations of the ex-employees, he said that they "ran the gamut of medical staff." In the weeks leading up to the octuplets' birth earlier this year, employees were trained on the importance of keeping patient information confidential.

A refresher course might be in order.

As for the mother of 14, Suleman said through her attorney Jeffrey Czech that she was not planning to take any legal action against the hospital at this time and that she is "very happy" that officials "will do everything in their power to rectify the situation."

As for what, exactly, the workers were attempting to discover, Czech told the Orange County Register that he thinks "people were looking for the name of the donor" but the attempts at snooping were probably pointless.

"I don't think there's anything in there that isn't already public," he said. "Everybody knows everything about these babies anyway."

(Originally published March 31, 2009, at 8:20 a.m. PT.)