I was the president for a year of a local branch of a national non-profit org dedicated to promoting golf, mostly to businesswomen in order to network with other businesswomen, to learn the game and the rules and etiquette, in part to break the glass ceiling of networking and business deals on the golf course being once exclusively male dominated and also to get young girls to take up golf. Worthy org.
And yea, also to have women only golf tournaments, weekly twilight afterwork 9-holes fun rounds, hold golf clinics, get discounted golf lessons and yes, have fun.
One of the women on the board wasn’t doing her job. She was charged with getting sponsors for our tournaments and other events, prize donations, paid ads in our newsletters, finding vendors to give our members discounts, and for well over 6 months had done nothing, nada, zip, didn’t even show up for any board meetings.
After consulting with the board, consulting our by-laws and coming to the unanimous decision by the board to remove her from the board, I wrote an email to her (she wasn’t returning my phone calls) and in the very nicest of terms, thanked her for her membership and her service but explained we needed someone who could devote more time and energy to the job.
I sent the email to her and only cc’d only the most senior board members, not the entire board and to no one else.
She replied with a 6-page rambling email accusing me of “malfeasance” among other things I can’t even remember now and defended her poor performance on her medical condition and current medical treatments and all the Rx drugs she was taking for them which she described in very great detail in her email.
She sent that email not only to me, but to the entire board AND to nearly the half the membership AND to all our current sponsors AND all the executives at the national org.
After consulting with our VP who was an attorney and the national org, we drafted a reply, again sent only to her and with a cc to only the most senior board members and no one else but a BCC to the national org, expressing our wishes for her speedy recovery and our hopes that once she was able, to rejoin the board and of course join us on the course. And not referencing or mentioning her medical condition.
But also reiterating the need to replace her if only at this time for the good of the chapter.
She then sent a reply email that included her original email disclosing all her PHI, AGAIN to the entire board AND to now nearly the entire membership AND our current sponsors AND all the executives in the national org AND now also to my employer, stating that I had violated “HIPPA*” for divulging her personal protected health information and since I worked at the time for a covered entity (a 3rd party benefits enrollment, COBRA and FSA administrator) she was going to sue both me and my employer (who she named and included my employer’s address and phone number in her email) for a “HIPPA*” violation.
When my boss asked me what this was about, I said, “never, ever, ever volunteer to be on the board of a non-profit?”
Even though this woman had self-divulged her own PHI and neither my employer or I had ever had any access to her PHI, I had to be interviewed by both our internal HIPAA compliance officer for any possible breach but also by our 3rd party compliance oversight company.
I was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, but it was like undergoing a colonoscopy.
When the president of the national org, called me to ask “what the hell happened?” and I explained, she said “that’s very unfortunate and you did nothing wrong, but we can’t get involved or provide you with any legal advice or defense” so basically “you’re on your own” and then in the next breath asked me if I was going to run for president of my chapter again, I answered “are you f’n kidding me?”
True story.
No fun. People are crazy.
As someone who has practiced employment law for nearly 30 years, I've noticed that far too many other attorneys are unwilling to take strong stances even when they are in the right. In this case, it would have taken one very blunt letter to her telling her that she voluntarily disclosed her health care information, that there is nothing approaching a violation of HIPAA, and that she is perfectly free to waste a lot of her own money to hire her own lawyer to tell her the same.
When you're indisputably in the right, there is no reason to mince words. Clunk them on the head with the 2X4, and tell them to get lost.
I know that it wasn't your position to do that, but your compliance people sound like gigantic p*ssies. But that's how compliance departments justify their staffing.