Three senior citizens filed a class-action lawsuit against Berwyn, Ill.-based MacNeal Hospital April 19, claiming the institution failed to secure their personal information, which was later used by a former hospital employee to steal from their homes, according to the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark.
Here are five things to know about the situation.
1. The plaintiffs, who range in age from 78 to 93 years, allege MacNeal Hospital failed to secure their personal information and failed to inform the affected patients when their information had been inappropriately accessed.
2. According to the complaint, obtained by the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark, former hospital employee Erik Albavera accessed an estimated 18 patients' information and "used his improper access to sensitive personal information to identify which plaintiffs and class members were currently patients at MacNeal Hospital and lived alone, as well as their addresses," the report states. He pleaded guilty to multiple counts of burglary and was sentenced to 10 years in state prison in November 2017.
"MacNeal Hospital's conduct constituted, at a minimum, gross negligence that show wanton disregard [for] the rights of the plaintiffs and class members regarding the safeguarding of their sensitive personal information," the complaint states.
3. The lawsuit claims Mr. Albavera worked as an employee at MacNeal Hospital for an unspecified amount of time between 2016 and 2017, and that his job did not require him to access patients' sensitive information, according to the report.
4. MacNeal Hospital was purchased by Maywood, Ill.-based Loyola Medicine earlier this year. A spokesperson for the health system told the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark MacNeal Hospital's former owner, Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, would be litigating the case. Tenet told Becker's Hospital Review via email May 16 the health system declines to comment on pending litigation.
5. The class-action lawsuit aims include any individual who was a patient at MacNeal Hospital from April 13, 2013, through Feb. 28, 2017, whose information may have been accessed by Mr. Albavera.
"[The patients] went to the hospital expecting the hospital to secure their information … and that didn't happen," the plaintiffs' lawyer told ABC 7 Chicago. "So what we are trying to achieve with this lawsuit is to get this hospital to change its ways and hopefully to send a message to other hospitals out there that people come there because they trust you and they expect you to take care of them not only medically but their information, their medical information, their financial information and their sensitive personal information such as where they live."