The worker, Cheryl Rhead, served as the lead admitting clerk in the hospital’s emergency room, and was a union leader with Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West. She also helped head up the ballot initiative to limit executive compensation at Tri-City Medical Center.
Ms. Rhead was accused of improperly accessing a patient’s file Dec. 29, 2015, according to the union. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports Ms. Rhead was told in a Feb. 18 letter, sent days before a Superior Court judge declined to stop the signature gathering drive for the initiative, that she would be dismissed effective this week. In the letter, according to the publication, Ms. Rhead claimed she was asked to access a patient’s record to check on the “registration process,” but the hospital said she accessed parts of the record that she did not “have a business need to access.”
The union said she plans to file a complaint with the Public Employee Relations Board to contest the hospital’s decision and seek to have her job restored.
The hospital denies the assertion Ms. Rhead was fired because of her work on the petition.
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