It’s amazing what you don’t find when you finally get around to looking for it. In this story out of the UK, a local council brought in consultants after one data breach, only to discover that their potential problem was bigger than they thought: …. Charnwood Borough Council admitted it could not find nine missing…
Author: Dissent
State privacy laws may undercut electronic medical records
John Timmer writes in Ars Technica: The US government has now adopted a policy of fostering the adoption of electronic medical records (EMR). The policy is intended to increase the efficiency of the US healthcare system, thereby lowering costs and reducing the incidence of preventable errors. At the same time, through its The Health Insurance…
HK: Lost flash drive with patient data wasn’t password-protected
Adele Wong of The Standard reports that the Hospital Authority has been urged to improve security to avoid further losses of patients’ records following another incident involving a lost flash drive with unencrypted data. In this most recent incident, a physician from the obstetrics and gynecology department at United Christian Hospital misplaced a USB flash…
Lessons not yet learned
For those readers who do not regularly read the companion breach site, DataBreaches.net, there have been five healthcare-related breaches reported in the past seven days. Two of the reports involved paper records and improper disposal. The other three incidents involved theft from business associates or third parties.  In all three of the theft cases, the…
Google Health Accused of Inaccuracy in Electronic Medical Records
Nicholas Kolakowski reports: Google Health, Google’s healthcare IT solution, has been called to task by physicians who say the billing information it uses for some patients’ electronic medical records can give an inaccurate picture of their health condition. Since rolling out in Feb. 2008, Google Health has been aligned to compete against Microsoft’s healthcare IT…
NC: Moses Cone Memorial Hospital patient data stolen from vendor
In what appears to be the third incident in the past week involving patient data and a third-party breach, personal information of more than 14,000 Moses Cone Health System patients was on a laptop stolen from VHA in Georgia. According to VHA’s web site, they serve 1,400 not-for-profit hospitals and more than 21,000 non-acute care…