Hannah Clay Wareham reports:
The debacle beginning in March 2009 with the loss of confidential patient records on a Red Line train continues in the new year with allegations of harassment against Massachusetts General Hospital staff.
[…]
Soon after Jacob received the administrative assistant’s e-mail, Jacob says an anonymous caller alerted him to the appearance of his name on “The Rip-off Report,” an anonymous user-generated Web site that contains information about companies and individuals that are accused of taking advantage of various systems. Jacob was shocked after reading what was written about him. “It was everything about me: my Medicare ID number, my Masshealth ID number, my medical record number, all my utility account records and everything,” he said. The entry also included Jacob’s social security number, address, and phone number, and falsely accused Jacob of being a level-three sex offender.
The anonymous author of the report claims to be writing “on behalf of a very good friend of mine who works at MGH, a prominent Boston hospital. My friend works with HIV+ and AIDS patients and is being bullied, harassed, stalked and she is trying very hard to have this man; [Jacob] removed from the hospital [sic].”
Read the complete news story on EdgeBoston.
Dissent comments:
As of today’s date, there are two reports about Jacob posted to RipoffReport.com, presumably by the same individual who self-describes as a paralegal who looked up his information. The individual writes, in part:
She got to the point that she felt that his potential lawsuit against her and her boss is making her ill, she is afraid of this man and although he can not be discharged as a patient she can not face him anymore. Now he is starting to visit outside her home, call her at home and she does not know what to do anymore. She does however have me as an external person who works at a law firm that she shared some private information about him that we need to make public.
“We” as in “we, the law firm I work for” or “we” as in “an employee who is covered by HIPAA and I?” I seriously doubt any reputable law firm would publish such information, raising the question for me as to whether the MGH employee formally retained/consulted with the law firm, and if so, do they know what their paralegal is posting? And if the paralegal is doing this on her own time, is she abusing access to any databases to get information for a personal matter?
I hope that the poster, the employee, and maybe even the law firm if they knew about this, are all brought to account for what appears to be an egregious privacy breach.