As I noted in a previous blog entry, I was curious as to why a breach that had originally been listed on OCR’s site involving University of Texas Medical Branch no longer appears on the site. I contacted HHS about the removal of the listing, and they confirmed my hunch: the breach pre-dated the September…
Author: Dissent
OCR drafts guidelines for security risk analysis
Mary Mosquera reports: The Health & Human Services Department published draft guidance to help healthcare providers and payers figure out what is expected of them in doing a risk analysis of their protected patient health information. The security rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires that providers, payment plans and their…
NHS 'scaring patients' over electronic records, premature babies' heightened sensitivity and phantom ministers stalking DH corridors
Steve Nowottny reports: The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail this morning cover the charge from privacy campaigners Big Brother Watch that Connecting for Health may be ‘scaring’ patients into agreeing to have a Summary Care Record. The lobby group accused Connecting for Health of overstating the risk to patients if they opt out of…
Email error adds insult to injury
Karin Spaink’s blog summarizes a Dutch data leak: Many people who were duped by DSB Bank going broke, joined the foundation Hypotheekleed (’mortgage pains’). One of them suddenly started to receive e-mails containing the names, data and mortgage information of other members. Apparently, this happened because one of the employees of the foundation entered the…
NZ: Hospital sorry for naming patients in reports
Kate Newton reports: Hutt Hospital has apologised to two patients after accidentally including their names and some medical details in public meeting papers. The blunder was discovered after the papers for Tuesday’s Hutt Valley District Health Board meeting had been distributed and the meeting held. The patients’ names were published in a section on serious…
Check cashing business throws out documents with Social Security numbers
Denae D’Arcy reports: A man made a disturbing find in North Knoxville Thursday evening. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of documents with personal information were dumped behind a shopping center. […] When a 6 News crew arrived at Fast Cash in a shopping center at 5100 Clinton Highway, they found documents scattered around a dumpster behind the…