More than 40 serious incidents and cases of malpractice were reported at West Midlands Ambulance Service in three years, including people falling off stretchers in ambulances and one crew failing to notice its patient had died. According to details released under the Freedom of Information Act, there have been 45 serious untoward incidents reported at…
Author: Dissent
UK: Looking for love in all the wrong places
Andy Bloxham reports: A woman police community support officer who trawled the national police computer to track down potential boyfriends has been fined for misconduct. Lucy Bevan, 25, used Northumbria Police’s confidential database to check up on prospective partners she met whilst out on the beat. North Tyneside Magistrates’ Court heard how Bevan was in…
Four U. Hawaii breaches since 2009 makes at least one student nervous
I received an email today from a University of Hawaii student who is feeling unsettled by all of the breaches that the University has had in the past year. He wanted to let me know that although mainstream media were saying that the University of Hawaii had experienced three breaches since 2009, they’ve actually experienced…
Will New Congress Alter HITECH Plans?
Howard Anderson writes: Republicans have pledged to block the spending of any economic stimulus money not yet spent, but it’s unlikely they’ll try to pull the plug on the federal HITECH Act incentive payments for use ofelectronic health records several observers say. But they expect the new Congress will keep a very close eye on the…
How to identify spreadsheets and databases with protected health information (PII and PHI)
Shahid writes: The nice folks from IBM’s developerWorks group asked me to write an intermediate-level set of instructions (with a little code) for how technical teams can identify and find databases and spreadsheets that might contain personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI). The article is now available on IBM’s developerWork… Read more…
Richmond school system inadvertently sent e-mail with personal data
Jeremy Slayton reports that an employee of the Richmond Public Schools sent an email on Tuesday morning that inadvertently contained personal information, including SSN, of almost 110 employees. The e-mail was sent out to all Richmond public school staff — about 3,300 employees — around 9:15 Tuesday morning. Less than an hour passed before the…