I was waiting to see what would happen with this one. Now I know. In a story headlined “Denver VA blames TV station for data breach,” Tom Roeder reports:
The Department of Veterans Affairs in Denver is blaming a television station for a data breach that officials say compromised the personal information of 508 patients.
[…]
I haven’t seen the press release, but did the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System really blame a TV station? I hope not. KRDO has a more reasonable headline for the story, “VA says information may have been compromised when former employee gave documents to TV station.”
In the VA’s monthly report to Congress for February, the incident, which occurred on February 5, was initially described as follows:
A former VA employee, released a wait list to a reporter as a “whistle blower.” The list had scheduled names, last four digits of SSN, and clinic names. It is possible the list also had first and last name. The media used the list in reporting a story and had stated “they have redacted protected health information (PHI)” to protect the Veterans. However, it is unknown when and who redacted the information and how many unredacted lists could still be at large. This incident occurred in the Sleep Clinic, a clinic which previously had two missing laptops this year. It is unknown if this is related, but it is possible.
In an update to the incident report, they note:
The employee left employment on 6/27/14 and contacted the media in September, 2014. The employees (sic) computer access has been terminated. It is not known if the employee printed the list prior to separating or if a current employee provided them the list. The DBCT suggested that the VISN Public Affairs Officer (PAO) contact the media to ask for the original document to be returned to the VA. The VISN PAO has stated that relations between the facility and the local media are not the best and there have been several negative stories about the facility in the news recently. It is possible the list was redacted prior to leaving VA custody.
In March, the VA provided further updates:
The Regional Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs (OPIA) has consulted with the facility and reports that the individual has admitted to taking VA records, lists and emails with them.
and
The document contains the Veterans (sic) name, last initial/last four of social, the patient’s desired date, and the referring clinic.
As far as I can tell, the media did what media do – they reported after responsibly redacting identifying information. Once the unredacted data had been delivered to the media, the breach occurred, whether or nor the media reported on it and regardless of the amount of detail they provided in their reporting. If the VA has a poor relationship with local media, that doesn’t help, but it doesn’t really change the fact that a breach of PHI occurred and needed to be disclosed, with patients notified.
So far, this incident has not appeared on HHS’s public breach tool, even though the VA indicated it is a HITECH reportable breach and presumably reported it to HHS.