Three separate lawsuits have been filed by Mayo Clinic patients claiming that a former surgery resident, Ahmad Alsughayer, viewed hundreds of nude photographs in electronic medical records. They claim that Alsughayer had no reason to go into their files.
Alsughayer, 28, was charged in April by the Olmsted County attorney’s office with only a single gross misdemeanor of unauthorized computer access after one of the 1,614 patients whose records he viewed filed a report with the Rochester Police.
Still, there have been three civil lawsuits filed.
One Rochester-area woman who works at Mayo and had nude medical images viewed last year by Alsughayer is suing the health system because it has failed to use a system that would have prevented the privacy breach.
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One of the victims, who the Star Tribune did not fully name due to her being in Minnesota’s Safe at Home program following a rape years earlier, compared the incident to her rape.
"It was like being raped again," Marisa said Tuesday. "When you lose control of your pictures ... it's like being totally violated."
The second lawsuit, filed by Olga Ryabchuk of Olmsted County, said that Ryabchuk felt the clinic personnel were not honest when it said the investigation couldn’t find a medical or business reason for the breach and that Mayo wouldn’t ever know why this happened.
"This representation was false," Ryabchuk's lawsuit says. "Mayo Clinic already knew, but did not tell plaintiff, that Alsughayer had requested access to these 1,600+ EHRs to view naked images of female patients ... and that Mayo Clinic chose not to implement the fixes and protections proper to have prevented this incident."
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The third lawsuit is pending with similar allegations to the other two, and all of them have been filed in state court, with two seeking class-action status.
Mayo Clinic said on Tuesday that after it conducted a staff investigation of the incident, it was determined that only one employee viewed patients’ “protected medical information.” It also that it notified the authorities and affected patients, according to the Star Tribune.
"Mayo Clinic is strongly committed to protecting the privacy of our patients, and we sincerely regret that this incident occurred," Mayo said in a statement last October. "Mayo takes this matter very seriously and as a result of this investigation is reviewing its policies and procedures."
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The clinic had initially released a statement about the leak on Oct. 5 of last year. In the release, Mayo confirmed that on Aug. 5, a lone former employee accessed the medical records of 1,614 patients.
"Mayo Clinic will fully corporate with law enforcement," the Mayo spokeswoman wrote Oct. 6.
The lawsuits will continue to proceed with two looking for class-action status.