On Wednesday, a local CBS affiliate reported that dozens of employees at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where Smollett was treated following his attack, had been fired for allegedly accessing Smollett’s medical records. In a report from the same affiliate Thursday, sources estimated that the hospital had fired upwards of 60 employees, and perhaps more, in connection with the Smollett case. (Northwestern Memorial declined to comment due to personnel and HIPAA constraints.) And on Friday, news broke that Chicago police have launched an internal probe of their own to find out who was responsible for leaking details about their investigation last month.
Multiple Northwestern Memorial employees, many of whom work as medical assistants or in an administrative capacity, claim that they never accessed Smollett’s records, and that they were fired without being asked any questions or given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf, “even in cases where Smollett’s name only appeared on their computer screens,” CBS reports. “I think because he’s famous, he’s a known celebrity, that’s why they made a big deal out of it,” one of the fired employees told the affiliate. The ex-staffers believe the hospital’s human-resources department went too far. As one former customer-service specialist put it, “It hurts after being there for 20 years.” The specialist added that she actually was authorized to enter Smollett’s chart in order to complete and release it...
