A report released yesterday by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Veterans Affairs indicates that they substantiated allegations that the VA was routinely transmitting sensitive information, including PII, PHI, and internal network routing information, over an unencrypted telecom carrier network. The Office of Information and Technology (OIT) disputes their findings,…
Month: March 2013
HIPAA and state law privacy claims stand while medical malpractice claim falls
From the Michael H. Cohen Law Group: A federal court in Indiana rules that patient’s HIPAA and state privacy claims could stand, based on the allegation that a physician shared information about the patient’s medical condition with his employer. In Reed v. Rodarte, No. 2:11 CV 153 (N.D. Ind. Feb. 14, 2013), the court rejected the physician’s…
Patient Steals Other Patients’ Info
Paul Smith reports on an incident at a Lancaster, Pennsylvania medical practice: A patient at Crooked Oak Family Medicine stole a document containing personal information about some of the practice’s other patients on February 5, 2013. Read more on Fox43. A statement posted today on Lancaster General Health‘s web site says: A Crooked Oak Family…
Law firms gear up for class-action against Montfort over personal data loss
Derek Spalding reports that lawsuit over a lost USB drive breach is brewing: Two heavyweight lawfirms out of Windsor and Toronto promise to launch a class-action lawsuit as early as next week against Montfort Hospital for its role in losing the personal information of 25,000 patients. Representatives from Sutts, Strosberg LLP and Falconer Charney LLP…
Caribbean banks issue credit card alert (update 2)
I’ve continued to look for updates to recent reports of a breach affecting banks in the Bahamas. Is this related, I wonder: Banks and other financial institutions across the Caribbean have been impacted by a security breach at a financial institution in the region. This potential security breach can result in the compromise of a…
HHS update to breach tool shows laptop theft is not a thing of the past, Part 2 (updated)
Updated to include details of the DentaQuest of Florida breach. HHIS updated its breach tool this week, adding a baker’s dozen of incidents. I did some digging to find details for the reports we did not know about already. Some of what I found was reported in Part 1, here. The following were also included…