Author: Dissent

Martha Neil reports: In the latest ruling in a steady stream of medical privacy cases, a California judge has nixed a Texas doctor’s claimed right to distribute videotapes of the 1994 breast augmentation surgery he performed on celebrity Anna Nicole Smith. After granting a preliminary injunction against Dr. Gerald Johnson last year, Los Angeles County…

Scott Macnab reports: Health chiefs failed to remove confidential patient records from a disused hospital despite repeated warnings, an official report yesterday found. NHS Tayside took action only after media reports emerged about the data which had been left lying at Strathmartine Hospital on the outskirts of Dundee. Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon yesterday said the…

CONFIDENTIAL medical letters, documents and payroll information have been stored in an unguarded corridor open to the public at Basildon Hospital. Our reporters were able to stroll into the corridor, off an access road at the back of the hospital, and look through envelopes, including some marked private and confidential. Read more in Echo

Steve Nowottny reports: The Government is planning to make compliance with data security standards a contractual requirement after claiming GPs are the weak link in keeping patient records safe. The plans – which are likely to be resisted by GPC negotiators – come just a week after a Pulse investigation found that four NHS trusts…

Two employees of a Stapleton nursing home were arrested after stealing a credit card from a patient’s bedside drawer and using it at several locations on Staten Island, according to a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel Donovan. Denard Brown, 44, of St. Mark’s Place in New Brighton and Benedicta Charles, 44, who lives at the…

Peter Timmins writes: From a recent case note (S v Health Service Provider [2008] PrivCmrA 19) issued by the Federal Privacy Commissioner on whether reasonable steps were taken to protect personal information from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure: “The Commissioner considered whether the steps taken by the health service provider,…