Hospital Not Liable for Facebook Post of Patient Medical Records

An Indiana hospital isn’t liable for an employee’s unauthorized actions that allegedly led to the posting of a patient’s medical records on Facebook, a state appeals court said.

Brooke Collins wasn’t acting within the scope of her employment at a Franciscan Alliance Inc. hospital when she allegedly accessed and distributed the confidential health information of Leslie Hayden, someone with whom she wasn’t on good terms with personally, the Indiana Court of Appeals said. The court affirmed pretrial judgment for Franciscan.

Collins worked as a registrar in St. Francis Hospital’s radiology department. In 2013, Hayden received treatment there for a broken ...