In June of 2012, I mentioned a dispute between Kaiser and one of its former business associates, Surefile Filing Systems. At that time, Chris Rauber had reported: “Kaiser handed over to me several hundred thousand patient records without a written contract” in 2008 and the following year, said Stephan Dean, who owns Surefile with his wife,…
Author: Dissent
Medicaid fraud scheme used children's Medicaid numbers and misappropriated therapists' Medicaid provider numbers
Here’s a case where Medicaid fraud created mental health and behavioral records in young people’s records that could have come back to cause difficulty for them at some point. The scheme also involved stealing a therapist’s identity/Medicaid provider number, which could have created serious problems for the therapist. The following is part of a press…
Shades of 2003: Have contractors started holding individuals’ PII hostage again?
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any report that a contractor or their employees were holding an organization’s client or patient data hostage as part of a dispute. To my surprise, however, there have been two such reports like that recently. One case is in the healthcare sector and I’ll be blogging about…
Former IT security manager for SCDOR testifies about the lack of security controls prior to its breach
Jeffrey Collins of Associated Press reports: The Department of Revenue was more concerned with keeping employees from accessing news, sports and social media websites on their work computers than protecting taxpayer data like Social Security numbers, a former computer security chief at the agency said Thursday. Read more on Aiken Standard. Tim Smith of Greenville…
Patient privacy and political musings
Erin McCann writes: Since 2005, some 60 million Americans have had their private health information compromised or disclosed electronically – a fact that has privacy experts, political players and consumers alike demanding reform. In an epoch of health IT, is the government doing enough to address and quell the privacy worries of the American people?…
Docs lack access to psychiatric records
Bernie Monegain reports: Medical centers that elect to keep psychiatric files private and separate from the rest of a person’s medical record may be doing their patients a disservice, a Johns Hopkins study concludes. In a survey of psychiatry departments at 18 of the top American hospitals as ranked by U.S. News & World Report’s…