It appears that celebrity comes itself with more than fame. It brings paparazzi trouble, which makes you watch all your moves for fear you would appear in an “unexpected” hypostasis on a newspaper. Now, celebrities have to be careful about their medical records, hospitals they check themselves in and doctors they see as well.

For example, an investigation by the California Department of Public Health revealed that the privacy of dozens of Hollywood celebrities has been breached by 127 trusted employees at a group of Los Angeles hospitals.

In California, the privacy of medical records is protected under the state and federal laws and the person who does such things risks her freedom or to pay fines or both.

According to the findings of the investigation, staff at the UCLA Medical Center used their administrative computer system to access the medical records of celebrity patients, including Farrah Fawcett, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, actors Tom Cruise and Dom DeLuise, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife, Maria Shriver and many more, some of them being unfortunate enough to find significant information from their files on different tabloids across the country.

Such an intrusive behavior continued even after Lawanda Jackson’s case became public. She was a former hospital worker, arrested and charged in early April with receiving $4,600 from an unidentified media outlet for leaking information about a patient, identified later as being Farrah Fawcett. Jackson declared herself just “being nosy” at the time and denied that she had received money for the “leaking” information. According to the report, she looked at the records of 939 patients “without any legitimate reason” from April 2003 to May 2007, including Social Security numbers.

“It was more of a curiosity. It was just me being nosy…It wasn’t to do anything to anybody. I don’t even remember half the stud I even looked at. There was no intent to do anything bad,” Jackson said in April.

Jackson had worked at the hospital for 32 years, until last year, when she was fired due to her “curiosity,” which exposed the UCLA to a major embarrassment for one of the nation’s preeminent medical centers.

Now with the new report, the situation is even worse. “What we’re seeing here is a clear pattern of repeated violations of patient medical records and patient confidentiality by UCLA. It is absolutely unacceptable,” Kim Belshe, secretary of the state’s Health and Human Services Agency said.

Following the results of the investigation, Dr. David Feinberg, chief executive of the UCLA Health System said “all other employees who were found to have violated patient confidentiality during our review have been disciplined, including some who have been terminated.” He further apologized for “this failure, and the personal distress these breaches may have caused.”

Maybe the new legislation proposed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s Governor (to impose financial penalties on hospitals whose employees breach confidentiality) would change something about this issue.

Back in April, Mr. Schwarzenegger said he was a victim of this kind of behavior in “his hospital visits” as well, naming the incident “outrageous. Patients’ medical records should be private-period. No one should have to worry that an unauthorized person is reviewing their private medical records,” he said in a statement.