It's unclear to what extent, if at all, security problems at Jackson Health System in Florida have been addressed a month after a video camera in a hospital pharmacy failed to record the theft of $18,000 in drugs, according to the Miami Herald.
Although the system's governing board requested an audit to learn how many security cameras were not working, the results of the report, which were discussed yesterday at a meeting will not be made public. The part of the committee meeting that covered the status of the security cameras was closed to the public under a Florida Sunshine Law provision that allows government entities to keep details of government security systems from the public. That Jackson Health did not come out and publicly report the audit's finding could suggest all has yet to be fixed.
But security managers at the nation's third largest health system were worried that a public report might reveal "weaknesses in the system" that could help future thieves, Committee Chairman Angel Medina told the Herald.
Surveillance weaknesses were first discovered in May, when 50 vials of Botox disappeared from the hospital system. Then in November, Public Health Trust members were told that some hospital cameras surveilled but didn't record, while others might have been broken; fixing those issues, the Trust was told, could be expensive, notes the Herald.
Jackson also received a complaint from Miami-Dade Inspector General Christopher Mazzella that a private web portal for Trust members and some Jackson employees "could lead to Florida Sunshine Law violations." The portal offers electronic versions of documents not available to the public, like proposed contracts with vendors, agenda items and agenda updates, according to the Herald.
For more:
- read the Miami Herald article