Skip to main content

UI Hospitals' Eavesdropping Allegations Spark PR Fiasco

 |  By John Commins  
   March 21, 2011

The HR/PR fiasco at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics provides a good example of what can happen when a dumb idea goes viral.

If you haven’t heard the story, Google “baby monitor” and “University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics” and “employees” and “spying.” Condensed version: An office supervisor at a UI urology clinic apparently planted a baby monitor behind a bag of cotton balls on a shelf near the desks of some office workers to listen in on their conversations.

Tysen Kendig, UI’s vice president for Strategic Communications, said the health system had: “completed its internal investigation into the monitoring of staff interactions at UIHC.

Appropriate disciplinary action has been taken against two UIHC staff members involved in the incident. Details of that disciplinary action are considered confidential personnel information. The investigation also determined that no violations of HIPAA laws, which govern privacy of patient records, occurred as a result of this incident.”

The Associated Press reported that the office supervisor in the Urology Department, who’d been with UI for 19 years -- “abruptly left employment Thursday.”

Will the dismissal mark the end of the great baby monitor caper? It’s hard to say. John Stellmach, a mailman for the health system and AFSCME Local 12 president, told HealthLeaders Media that the incident has rattled employees. The alleged bugging – which is a misdemeanor crime in Iowa – was an isolated incident by a direct supervisor who used poor judgment, Stellmach says, but he’s more troubled by the initial response from hospital leaders, who he said tried to “sweep it under the rug” before the news media found out.

“It reflects lack of transparency that’s prevalent in the culture here that currently exists. It probably would have been a lot easier to stomach if they had just come out and said ‘we screwed up,’” Stellmach says. “Being a mailman, I’ve had tons of doctors and nurses and research staff and all of us regular employees say ‘wink, wink, nod, nod. We know what happened and what they are doing.’”

Stellmach says he was told that the supervisor had planted the monitor after another employee had complained that her colleagues were “talking too much.” The union rep says he was told the office manager was concerned that the workers were talking about patients, and that their comments could have run afoul of HIPAA. It turns out that was not the case, he says.

The baby monitor fiasco marks the second time in 10 months that UI’s HR department has been involved in a public relations debacle, which is particularly unusual in the staid and conservative world of healthcare HR.

In May 2010, Chad D. Simmons abruptly quit as the top HR officer at the health system after just 16 months on the job. The Associated Press reported that Simmons -- a former Kraft Foods executive -- was recruited in January 2009 after a national search, despite his lack of experience in healthcare or academia HR administration. No explanation for Simmons departure was given, but he took with him a $450,000 severance package – this after the university paid consulting firm Witt/Kieffer more than $109,000 to recruit him, AP said.

UI apparently learned from that debacle, and formed a 16-member search committee of executives, physicians, union representatives, and staff to find a replacement, Jana R. Wessels, who took over as associate vice president for UI Health Care Human Resources on March 1. In fairness to Wessels, she can’t be blamed for either the Simmons hiring or the baby monitoring fiasco. But, she’s in charge now – this happened on her watch -- and she is the one who will have to deal with the fallout.

Ironically, Stellmach was on the search committee. “The charge to the committee was we want to find someone who is going to help change the culture here. And this is the very first action that comes out from the new HR position. It’s disheartening because it looks to us like its business as usual,” he says.

Wessels and Jean Robillard, MD, the vice president for medical affairs, issued an apology – sort of – in an Intranet memo to health system employees that reads:

Local media have reported that a supervisor at UI Hospitals and Clinics placed a baby monitor in a work area. Upon discovery of the monitoring device, it was promptly removed. A thorough investigation is presently underway. As part of this investigation, it has been determined that no conversations were transmitted. In addition, there is no evidence of any HIPAA violation. UI Health Care regrets this extremely unfortunate situation, which is not in keeping with our organization’s values or sound supervisory practice.

It’s a start -- sort of -- but it may be time for UI leadership to do a little soul searching and ask itself tough questions. For starters, they should ask themselves how a manager at the health system could ever conceive that spying on employees was appropriate. It does appear to be an isolated incident of bad judgment, but does it also reflect some deeper issues with trust and engagement at UI?

 “We are just regular working folks, but we aren’t dumb and we weren’t born last night,” Stellmach says. “We know what happened and it’s a shame that they didn’t just fess up and say ‘this happened and we are sorry.’”

The baby monitor scandal may not reflect the reality at UI, but it reflects the perception. 

John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.

Tagged Under:


Get the latest on healthcare leadership in your inbox.