Dive Brief:
- A Missouri woman who was threatened with jail after taking a picture of her 7-year-old son at a local hospital has sued the hospital for false imprisonment and emotional distress.
- Mom Mandi Wilson's suit seeks not only financial damages, but also an injunction barring Springfield's Mercy Hospital from prohibiting patients and visitors from taking photos at the hospital. It also seeks to establish class action status for other people who were similarly affected at Mercy.
- The suit also names security guard Lonnie Perkins, who Wilson secretly recorded warning her that she would be barred from returning to Mercy and could be taken to the county jail if she came back. The officer said that the mom was being treated as a trespasser because she had violated HIPAA.
Dive Insight:
What a mess. Clearly, it's good that even security guards are aware of HIPAA, but it's obvious that something didn't work right here. Whatever his intentions, it appears that the security guard was decidedly in the wrong. According to the story, a CMS spokesperson has said that hospitals can't prevent mothers from taking pictures of their own children. But the security guard apparently didn't get that memo, or perhaps was following inappropriate orders. The truth will probably come out in court.
The hospital, meanwhile, seems to have been caught completely off guard by the situation. A Mercy Hospital spokesperson told a local newspaper that execs are reviewing their policy on taking photos, but apparently didn't have a written policy that they were willing to share with the reporter. And the bad PR is accumulating daily; National Public Radio and investigative website ProPublica have both mentioned Mercy and Wilson in articles on whether privacy laws are being misused to protect medical center interests. Sadly, the actions of one heavy-handed security guard have blown up into a national incident.