Klara Castanho case: Leaking data is criminal and requires compensation

The account by actress Klara Castanho, 21, about the leak of information from her medical record exposes serious flaws in the hospital and professionals who have a legal obligation to protect patient confidentiality, according to hospital managers and lawyers.

Klara revealed on Saturday (25) that she was the victim of a rape and kept the pregnancy, giving the child up for adoption after birth.

The actress reported that, still under the effect of anesthesia during childbirth, a nurse entered the operating room and threatened her with leaking information about the situation.

“She asked questions and threatened: ‘Imagine if such a columnist discovers this story’. I was inside a hospital, a place that was supposed to welcome and protect me. When I arrived in the room there were already messages from the columnist, with all the information “, wrote Klara on her Instagram.

This Sunday (26), Coren (Regional Council of Nursing of São Paulo) announced that it will investigate the complaint involving the nursing professional. Ultimately, the nurse may lose the professional record.

In the opinion of lawyer Josenir Teixeira, legal consultant in the health area, leaking the patient’s medical record is criminal. “It exposes the most intimate physical and psychic innards of the human being.”

The doctor and doctor in business administration Walter Cintra Ferreira Júnior, professor of hospital administration at FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas), has the same opinion.

“It’s a criminal action. Even before the LGPD [Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados], this was already characterized. You need to find out, everyone has the right to ample defense, but that the due punishments are carried out because this is all a real horror.”

According to Teixeira, the facts reported by the actress, if confirmed, demonstrate the violation of articles of the Federal Constitution, the Civil Code and the Consumer Defense Code, in addition to resolutions of professional councils.

The lawyer explains that claims for damages can be brought against the hospital (legal entity) and the nurse (individual). “The nurse must be employed by the hospital, which puts you in a position of solidarity with her in the payment of compensation.”

In addition to being able to be dismissed for just cause, the nurse should also be able to be investigated in a police investigation and become a defendant in a criminal action. She can also be prosecuted for non-compliance with the code of ethics.

For Ferreira Júnior, the case must serve as a warning for hospitals and health professionals to review their codes of conduct.

He remembers, for example, an episode when he was director of a public hospital in which a cleaning lady spread the word in the community where he lived that a patient at the institution, who was his neighbor, had died of AIDS.

This caused much inconvenience to the patient’s family, who sued the hospital for leaking the information.

“The hospital has professional surveillance, cleaning, administrative staff, and everyone needs to be educated regarding the code of conduct and the consequences if broken.”

Francisco Balestrin, president of Sindhosp (São Paulo union of hospitals, clinics and laboratories), says that these issues related to patient confidentiality are well established in institutions and are even more reinforced when patients are of “social interest”, such as politicians and artists .

“But unfortunately there are professionals who use their individual criteria to do this or that. They position themselves with ideological beings, they make judgments, they cause deceit to the patient.”

He says that hospitals are places where people should feel protected. “But today, even in these institutions, you are subject to this ideological exacerbation that we have seen in society.”

Balestrin cites the episode that involved the leaking of confidential data from the medical record of former first lady Marisa Letícia Lula da Silva, in 2017. In a WhatsApp group, a doctor from Hospital Sírio-Libanês shared data on the health status, which soon went viral. The hospital fired the professional for just cause.

For Balestrin, the case involving actress Klara Castanho shows that institutions and health professionals have not learned anything.

He says that hospitals define rules, protocols and conduct, but that, in recent years, he observes that professionals are losing a lot of their ethical training.

In the opinion of psychologist Daniela Pedroso, Klara’s case reinforces the unpreparedness of the professionals’ services to assist women victims of rape who become pregnant.

She recalls that patients need to be informed both about the legal right to abortion, at any stage of pregnancy, and about the option of putting the child up for adoption. “She needs to be welcomed and respected in the option she wants.”