Dozens of Chicago Hospital Workers Were Fired for Looking at Jussie Smollett’s Records

by | Mar 7, 2019 | News | 0 comments


Photo Credit: Jussie Smollett/Instagram

While Jussie Smollett can potentially face 20 years of prison time for a list of felonies from mail fraud to terrorism and filing a false police report, there’s been some collateral damage revealed to come out of it all, and not just police hours investigating this attack. Dozens of workers at Northwestern Hospital where he first went after the alleged attack occurred were fired for looking at his records. And it wasn’t even a situation of discussing the infraction, they were fired on the spot once it was revealed what happened. Multiple nurses are claiming the reaction was heavy handed and completely inaccurate. One nurse claims to have only been scrolling past his name without ever actually opening his file. A Northwestern Hospital representative addressed the matter saying HIPAA prevents the hospital “from acknowledging if a patient received care” there. Further, company policy prohibits said representative “from commenting on the employment status of any employee.”

The Chicago Police ruled out the attack as a hoax and made a case before the public during a press conference on February 21st laying out a timeline of events including paying two friends of his $3,500 to attack him. This lead to him being indicted on the charge of filing a false police report and spending the morning in the Cook County jail. But everyone isn’t so convinced of his guilt. One person who has come out recently saying they were going to support him until they felt they had reason to do otherwise was Queen Latifah. In fact, she said “Until somebody can show me some proof otherwise, I’m going with him,” Latifah said on Yahoo News’ Through Her Eyes series. “Because the guy I’ve seen has always been someone who cares about people, who cares about others, whose very kind and whose always cool and sweet, that’s the guy I know. So until I can see some definitive proof, which I haven’t seen yet, then, you know, I gotta go with him.”

And can you blame Latifah for her support of Smollett? Despite widespread calls to denounce him, she’s in the same industry as him. At the end of the day this is someone she has to work with and until there’s complete evidence claiming he’s guilty, why take that public stance unnecessarily making enemies prematurely? After all, to this day there have been a number of discrepencies in the story and despite looking guilty as sin, he does still have another court case coming up March 14th. And if you’re a fan of Smollett’s, he’ll be appearing in the next episode of Empire the day before on March 13th.