Can trust be restored in a hospital after two major privacy crises?

Vera Vlastra.

Coombs writes that when a crisis situation is happening, it is most important for an organization to repair their reputation and reduce uncertainty. Organizations present their press releases in a certain frame and with certain aspects, that make it newsworthy. It is interesting to see what this is like in a delicate crisis situation that is related to privacy, especially when it happens two times in a short time period to the same organization. This is exactly what happened to a hospital in The Hague.

What happened at the HagaZiekenhuis?
HagaZiekenhuis is the hospital in The Hague where the last one and a half year two major crisis situations happened. In the beginning of 2018 Samantha de Jong, better known as the Dutch Barbie,

Samantha de Jong, who was the subject of the first crisis.

was rushed to the hospital in The Haque. She had taken an overdose of drugs during a suicide attempt. This was big news in the Netherlands, because she is a famous celebrity. In April of that year EenVandaag made public that dozens of the hospitals’ employees have illegally looked into her medical file. All these employees were not authorized to look in her medical dossier, because only medical staff members who are directly involved with the patient are authorized.

You might think the hospital and their employees learnt from this crisis about privacy? Well they did not. In the beginning of September of this year another privacy crisis appeared. Patient data of the hospital was found in a shopping cart in a local supermarket. The list, which included names, birth dates, medication and medical complaints of 19 patients, was used as a grocery list.

Picture of the patient data list Omroep West got. They made it unreadable. 

How did the hospital react to these crises?
The same day as EenVandaag made the first crisis public HagaZiekenhuis posted a press release* about this topic on their website. In this press release they confirmed the crisis and said they have been researching the case. They stated to be shocked about the crisis and they attach great importance to ensuring the privacy of patients. The hospital informed the patient who is concerned and apologized on behalf of the hospital. Their reaction to the second crisis is similar to the first one. The same day as the news came out the hospital posted a press release on their website where they addressed the situation. They informed the 19 patients and apologized to hem and they also made a statement that patients have to count on the fact that their medical data stays inside the hospital.

But was this reaction the right one?
Nijkrake and other experts researched the different frames used in communication and according to him the frames the hospital used in their press release can be categorized as the ‘human-interest frame’ and the ‘responsibility frame’. The human-interest frame is shown in the fact that the hospital emphasizes how the patients is affected by the crisis, in these cases attacks on their privacy. The hospital also makes an apology to the involved patients. The responsibility frame is shown, because they state that a group of employees is responsible for the first crisis and one employee is responsible for the second crisis. Even though privacy is very difficult and delicate topic the hospital should have taken more responsibility in their press release in terms of acknowledging they are the ones that were wrong and not only the employees that looked into the files. Coombs says that the stronger the internal control of a crisis is the higher the attribution of responsibility needs to be. Therefor they needed to make their responsibility more salient and even more salient for the second crisis. They also need to apologize to all their stakeholders, such as the other patient and employees. Other employees might not be trusted anymore even though they did not have anything to do with the situation. According to Schafraad and colleagues the factors ‘employee and management’ and ‘elite organization’ make the press releases from the hospital news worthy so the media will cover their press release. Therefor it seems like the hospital found it important that their reaction to the situation was picked up by the media. 

*Note: At 26^th of September 2019 HagaZiekenhuis removed all their press releases from before the 24^th of January 2018 and therefor this press release was removed from their website.

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About the author: Vera Vlastra is doing a master in Persuasive Communication at the

University of Amsterdam. Before this study she did a bachelor in Communicationscience

at the same university. She is also interested in social media, cooking, gaming and loves traveling.

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If  you are interested in more:

Coombs, W.T. (2007). Protecting organization reputations during a crisis: the development and application of situational crisis communication theory. Corporate Reputation Review, 10(3), 163-176. doi:10.1057/palgrave.crr.1550049

Nijkrake, J., Gosselt, J.F. & Gutteling, J.M. (2015) Competing frames and tone in corporate communication versus media coverage during a crisis. Public Relations Review, 41(1), 80-88. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.10.010

Schafraad, P., van Zoonen, W., & Verhoeven, P. (2016). The news value of Dutch corporate press releases as a predictor of corporate agenda building power. Public Relations Review, 42(3), 451–458. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.11.014