[bigdogjon1966]

My mother currently works for a cleaning agency inside a hospital. She was told to high dust and clean in the medical records area. She was instructed to clean over tops of medical files and in the process she knocked a file out on the floor. When the file landed in a closed state she picked it up and tried to determine where it fell from. Only looking for the numbers for the place of the file, never touched the files that were in place someone ask her if she needed assistance. She explained she had knocked the file off and the person who assisted her was a hospital employee who works in medical records and knew exactly where and showed her for the future how to determine by number to replace a file. Within 10 minutes she was called to her managers office being accused of going through medical records. She was told they were going to let her go because she had created a felony. They have accused her of committing a felony in 3 conversations regarding this same incident. However she is still there but is only allowed to work 3 hours a day. She has been placed pretty much under a gag order and is being treated as though she is a criminal, being denied even to go to the hospital cafeteria. She is 62 years old with heart health problems and is about to loose her insurance. Her last paycheck was $5.06 yes $5.06 after she paid her insurance. They have now decided to let her work 2 extra hours to keep payroll from being suspicious they said. She has not been allowed to talk with human resources about this or the person who accused her of such doings. She has been instructed to not speak with upper management or fellow employees concerning this matter. I know without a doubt my mother did not intentionally do anything wrong, and if they really felt she committed a felony as she has been accused of shouldn't they just fire her. I feel they want her to just give up to keep her from drawing her unemployment benefits. She is desperate to keep her insurance and will keep allowing them to mistreat her. Being a full time employee with all benefits for 2 1/2 years, has now been dropped down to a part time employee, with no benefits. They have hired approximately 3 or 4 new full time employees since this happen approx.6 weeks ago when my mother was placed on part time.

[Fr_Chuck]

She can not be refused to talk to Human Resource. In fact she needs to go talk to them.

It is not illegal discrimination, unless they do it because of her age, race and other protected reasons.

It sounds like the manager in that department may not know the rules, or did this for some other reason.

She made a serioius issue in looking though the files, to put one back, she should have merely placed it on top of files and tell someone.

It is not a felony, but it may be a HIPAA violation, if they believe she was looking at the files.

Next they can not stop her from going to the lunch area for her breaks.

So her first stop should be in the HR department in the morning