Months before UCLA Medical Center caught its staffers snooping in the medical records of pop star Britney Spears, ’70s TV icon Farrah Fawcett learned that a hospital employee had surreptitiously gone through records of her cancer treatments there, documents and interviews show.

Fawcett’s lawyers said they are concerned that the information was subsequently leaked or sold to tabloids, including the National Enquirer.

Shortly after UCLA doctors told Fawcett that her cancer had returned – and before she had told her son and closest friends – the Enquirer posted the news on its website. Indeed, alarming headlines regularly cropped up in the Enquirer and its sister publication, the Globe, within days of Fawcett’s treatments at the UCLA hospital.

UCLA subsequently terminated the employee who inappropriately reviewed Fawcett’s records, according to one person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

This was the second time that information on Fawcett’s links to UCLA was inappropriately shared by someone connected with the hospital. In a 2006 letter, one of her physicians, Gary Gitnick, informed Fawcett that a former hospital contractor had listed her name on his blog, “suggesting you are a patient and/or charitable donor of mine and UCLA.”

While Fawcett, now 61, was being treated at UCLA, officials had been monitoring access to some of her records to guard against a privacy breach – and found none, said Carole A. Klove, chief compliance and privacy officer for UCLA Healthcare and Medical Sciences.

But after the Enquirer ran its exclusive story, “Farrah’s Cancer is Back!,” last May, Fawcett complained to her doctor, Eric Esrailian, and UCLA launched an investigation and looked at additional records. The hospital discovered “multiple reviews” of her records by a worker who was not involved in Fawcett’s treatment, Klove said.

Klove said the hospital found no evidence that the worker either inappropriately disclosed or sold the information she acquired. Klove would not identify the worker involved, citing employee privacy.

“Our patients need to know that they can trust that when they come to UCLA that their information will be kept safe and secure,” she said. “When and if we find inappropriate disclosures, we do take action, and that disciplinary action can include termination.”

Fawcett, who is most famous for her work on the 1970s television series “Charlie’s Angels” and a bestselling swimsuit poster, declined to comment.

But associates say the latest breach has left her shaken. She was scheduled to discuss the issue last month with Dr. David Feinberg, chief executive of the UCLA Hospital System, but had to postpone the meeting because she was not feeling well.

“She’s been invaded – and these are the people who she entrusted her life to,” said Craig J. Nevius, who is producing the upcoming documentary “A Wing and a Prayer,” which chronicles Fawcett’s battle with anal cancer and her efforts to protect her privacy from the tabloids.

One of Fawcett’s lawyers, Kim Swartz, said his client is reluctant to sue over the leaked information, but added, “This is such an ugly situation.”

“This has been very hard for her,” Swartz said. “Not knowing who has her personal information has taken an incredible toll on her and her fight with cancer.”

Fawcett no longer receives her cancer care at UCLA, Nevius said. It is now being overseen by physicians in Germany. She receives follow-up treatment and tests at a different Los Angeles facility and is hopeful for a full recovery.

“She is cautiously optimistic,” Nevius said. “Farrah has learned the hard way that with cancer, the test is time. At the moment she has no detectable cancer.”

The incident is the second in which UCLA employees improperly accessed medical records of a celebrity patient. The Times reported last month that UCLA was in the process of firing 13 employees and disciplining 12 others for improperly accessing Spears’ electronic records while she was treated in its psychiatric hospital earlier this year. At the time, UCLA officials portrayed that breach as an anomaly.

Asked this week if the records of any other high-profile patients had been perused inappropriately, Klove said, “not to my knowledge.”

Many workers have legitimate reasons to access a patient’s records, she said, whether for lab testing, pathology reports, billing, medication management or nursing notes.

“This is something that we take very seriously. Our employees take it seriously and I think we are actively auditing records to ensure that access is not inappropriate.”

Even with greater attention to medical privacy in the United States, the hospital records of high-profile and other patients have been breached around the country as record-keeping systems have become computerized.

Gitnick, one of Fawcett’s doctors at UCLA, said he finds the violation of Fawcett’s privacy “despicable.”

“I have nothing but disdain for people who would do such a thing and who would violate patients’ confidence,” he said. “We just want the best for Farrah. She’s been a wonderful patient and a wonderful person and I’m really sorry that this occurred.”

While angry at UCLA, Fawcett and her representatives reserve most of their scorn for the Enquirer and the Globe, which they say have printed false or grossly exaggerated reports. Among them, Nevius said, are reports that Fawcett was going blind, suffered from shingles, underwent a hysterectomy, had a rib removed and had called actor Patrick Swayze, who recently was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Most painful, her representatives said, was the headline “Farrah Begs: ‘Let me die’; She tells pals she can’t fight anymore.”

Enquirer senior reporter Alan Smith would not address the tabloid’s sources, but defended his coverage of Fawcett’s cancer. “This is a newsworthy story,” he said. “We publish what we believe is accurate.”

Responding to complaints from Fawcett’s lawyers about the accuracy of 14 stories, the lawyer for the Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., wrote in a July 2007 letter that the articles were “based upon information provided by exceptional sources directly in a position to know the information reported.”

One of the most troubling aspects of the snooping, Nevius said, is that Fawcett went by an alias when getting care at UCLA – and so the employee who viewed her records must have been able to learn the alias.

Klove said some of the electronic systems at the hospital, including billing and patient management, must include information on both a patient’s alias and her real name.

After Fawcett learned of the breach, she, her producer and her lawyers all talked to Klove, several participants said. They asked for the employee’s name, with no success. And her lawyers then asked UCLA to give the employee a letter seeking a meeting to discuss the incidents. After being given the document, the worker declined the invitation.

charles.ornstein@latimes.com