Ok…I’ll admit the titillating title is a little over the top. However, when you get right down to it…essentially Penn State is asking their employees if they are “touching” themselves and if so, how often. All done in the name of better health and employee relations.
After the Sandusky sex abuse scandal, this institution has a lot to learn about employee rights. Employee rights of privacy. Management at Penn State went wrong with their new Wellness questionnaire. A questionnaire that will punish employees $100.00 a month if they don’t answer the questions.
As reported in Reuters, a whistleblower named Matthew Woessner, Associate Professor of Political Science exposed the 12-page form being required by the university for health care coverage. The form “reviewed by Reuters, asks for data on glucose, cholesterol, weight, about feeling sadness or guilt, experiencing problems with friends or supervisors or finances, and a long list of screenings, all of which can trigger more doctors’ visits, invasive tests and surgery that may not improve health.” Experts agree, the disincentive for employees is not the way to improve health. Heath care costs will increase.
But I wonder what the punishment will be if Penn State finds out men haven’t touched their testicles and lied on the form? What if Penn State finds out a man has Tinea cruris? Should the male employee with crotch rot be fired because he lied? I can see the wrongful employment case in the news now; “Penn State employee fired for not checking his balls.”
While the above scenario may raise a few bushy eyebrows, and cause some serious snickers, the main question should be what does Penn State hope to carry out once they have the information on employees. Will they tell an employee who answers honestly that if they don’t check their testicles on a regular basis, they are on probation and can’t be in the locker room? Will Penn State then have a right to check out the wife or partner of the man under their health care plan to see she/he is infected? Will all the co-wokers be checked in a fungus sting???
Maybe Penn State will anonymously send the employee with an inflamed scrotum a free Rx of topical antifungal medication and glucocorticoid steriods. Or Penn State will contact the employee’s doctor and tell them to check the groin. Will the doctor have to comply to be paid? If the doctor does and reports back to Penn State, is that a Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996, (HIPAA) violation? Hmmmm….
Speaking of HIPAA, let’s check the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website to see if WebMD the company conducting the questionnaire is a covered entity. Upon review, I’d say NO! WebMD is a corporation that provides medical information including rights under HIPAA. WebMD is not a medical provider, thus not subject to HIPAA. Penn State employees would be providing WebMD medical information voluntarily if they complete the questionnaire.
There are a lot of problems with what Penn State is doing to their employees under the thin veil to learn private information aside from coercion. Another of the questions was how employees “deal with stress — asking if they pray, journal, meditate, exercise or anything else…” as reported by The Daily Collegian. Those kinds of questions are things between a person, their God if they believe in one. Most doctors would be reluctant to bring up prayer to patients. Apparently, the Penn State legal department forgot, they can’t ask employees questions about their religion. Not even in the holy name of health care!
Maybe Penn State should ask the children that Sandusky molested if they prayed someone in management would stop the famed athletic coach from molesting them. Maybe Penn State management should pray for some divine intervention on how to fix their lack of ethics acumen. Or just get someone in their working who has the foresight to realize what a stupid decision it was to send out a questionnaire that delved into areas that would offend reasonable people.
Penn State should think about the damage done to their reputation as a leading educational institution that looked the other way at criminal activity by Sandusky, and practice basic ethics concepts like do unto others, instead of prying into the private lives of good employees. This latest episode in Penn State lore goes down in the books for lack of leadership, bad management and ignorance of scientific evidence. Whoever approved the WebMD questionnaire should be fired for lack of intelligence.
Penn State management continues to fail to understand ethics. Good thing the political science guy Woessner gets it.
Note: Under Section 164.502 of the Federal Register Department of Health and Human Services final ruling on Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information it states:
“Protected Health Information includes individually identifiable information in any form, including information that is transmitted ORALLY, or in written or electronic form. This Privacy Ruling requires that covered health care entities make reasonable efforts to limit the use or disclosure of protected health information to the minimum necessary.”
