1. Cases You Probably Didn’t See in the News…
A licensed practical nurse pled guilty to wrongfully disclosing a patient’s health information for personal gain faces a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine or both.
Andrea Smith, LPN, 25, and her husband, Justin Smith, were indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to violate and substantive violations of HIPAA. At the time, Smith worked as a nurse at Northeast Arkansas Clinic, a multispecialty clinic in Jonesboro, Arkansas. She accessed a patient’s medical record and disclosed information to her husband, an attorney, who planned to use the information in a legal proceeding.
She was sentenced to 2 years of probation, 100 hours of community service and surrendered her nursing license.

2. Chelsea Catherine Stewart has been sentenced to a total of 39 months in federal prison. Of the total sentence, 15 months is for Wrongfully Obtaining Individually Identifiable Health Information and Attempted Bank Fraud, after taking patient information from a hospital.
Huping Zhou, 47, employee at UCLA Health System, was sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty in January to four misdemeanor counts of accessing and reading confidential medical records with no job-related reason. Zhou was also fined $2,000. Note that he didn’t take any information- he only read it.