I worked in hospital in the business office. That's the office which sends the claims to your insurance company to be paid. I accessed a co-workers account to get her phone number to call her back after a call she made to the office was disconnected only to call her back. I did not give her phone number to anyone nor did I discuss anything I saw. I can't even remember her phone number. Is this a hipaa violation?

As long as you accessed her account for business reasons which you did because she called you. Then I would have to say No...

Did the account have her medical information or just demographics? Most likely not a violation since you have access to all accounts of all patients, right? Also you had a legitament reason to open the file

Have not heard from you on what was in the file but after thinking about this I now think it is a violation. Unless you were working on here insurance claim you had many other options to get her number without opening the file. While it may have been convenient and unintentional you opened a medical file which had private informnation other than the phone number.

There were no other options to obtain her phone number and the first screen you see has a patients demographics. No I did not see any of her personal health information. Needless to say, I lost my job because of this.

No, unless Patient information was accessed or views.