Loose lips sink fired mental health worker's bid for unemployment comp

Nov. 18--The loose lips of a mental health care worker who told a patient's wife how to divorce him have cost her a job and her ability to collect unemployment compensation.

Bonnie L. Ferrero's decision to share too much information blatantly violated the confidentiality and ethics policy of her former employer, St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem, a Commonwealth Court panel ruled Friday.

According to an opinion by Judge Julia K. Hearthway, Ferrero had worked at the hospital as a behavioral health case manager for five years when she had her fateful phone conversation in September 2015.

The hospital had a policy that required employees to act in the best interest of their patients and "refrain from the unauthorized discussion of a patient's confidential information, Hearthway noted.

Instead, even though a protection from abuse order was in place involving the couple, Ferrero told a patient's wife how to divorce him and how to dispose of his property, the judge observed. Ferrero also supposedly told the wife to tell the patient she and their son would be fine without him and to treat the patient like a child.

Her advice to serve the patient with divorce papers while he was hospitalized went against a conclusion by hospital staff that such an act would not be in the patient's best interest, court filings state.

Ferrero's comments were overheard by a nurse care manager who reported them to hospital officials. That prompted an investigation in which those officials found Ferrero hadn't properly maintained her patient records, Hearthay noted. She was fired for violating the ethics/confidentiality police and for poor work performance.

On appeal to the state court, Ferraro claimed the nurse misconstrued what she had overheard. She said she didn't know about the PFA. The patient had signed a release allowing her to speak with his wife Ferrero argued.

Hearthway's panel instead credited an earlier decision by the state Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, which found the hospital's account of the incident to be more believable.

Ferrero's contention that "if she did violate (her) employer's work rule, she did do unintentionally" simply isn't convincing, Hearthway concluded.

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