Dan Kelly and Ron Devlin report: Reading Hospital’s medical records system was breached recently by an employee who copied sensitive patient information and used it for training purposes, hospital officials confirmed Thursday. Medical test results, diagnoses, prescribed medications and other data legally classified as Protected Health Information on 12 patients was made public without the…
Author: Dissent
Mich. HIV contractor violated privacy policy, investigation finds
A government contractor in Michigan violated the state’s data security policies in its handling of thousands of pages of information relating to people living with HIV, a state investigation has found. The investigation concluded, however, that no state or federal laws were broken and that no individually identifiable private health information was disclosed to the…
AU: Fish, chips, and a side order of card fraud
Ben Grubb reports that the number of data breaches in Australia is at least double what is reported to the government because there is no mandatory breach notification law. And not surprisingly, many of the breached entities are small businesses. Read more on Sydney Morning Herald.
UK council fined £70,000 following theft of highly sensitive data from employee’s home (updated with response from Council)
From the Information Commissioner’s Office: The London Borough of Barnet has been issued with a penalty of £70,000 for losing paper records containing highly sensitive and confidential information, including the names, addresses, dates of birth and details of the sexual activities of 15 vulnerable children or young people. The loss occurred when a social worker took the paper records…
Howard University Hospital employee charged with selling patient info
Jim McElhatton reports that Howard University Hospital has disclosed another data breach that appears to be unrelated to the theft of a contractor’s laptop reported in March. Charging documents filed in federal court in Washington this week say Laurie Napper, a technician in the surgery department, sold patients’ names, addresses, dates of birth and Medicare…
Zero tolerance for human error? Utah governor fires tech director
Heather May reports that at least one head has rolled in the wake of the Utah Department of Health breach in March: Gov. Gary Herbert apologized to the 780,000 victims of the health data security breach on Tuesday. To restore the public’s trust, he announced Tuesday that he fired Department of Technology Services director Stephen…