Author: Dissent

  Zack Kaldveer of the Consumer Federation of California writes: The California Senate rejected a bill this week by a vote of 17 to 17 (21 needed to “pass”) that would have allowed the sharing of a patient’s confidential medical information regarding prescription drugs among a pharmacy, third party corporations and pharmaceutical companies. The bill…

Lauran Neergaard reports: Woodrow Wilson’s secret stroke. Grover Cleveland’s secret cancer surgery. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretly worsening heart disease at the world-changing Yalta Conference. Notice a lot of secrets? While the public knows far more today about the health of its presidents and presidential candidates than ever before, do we know enough? And does knowing…

Rhys Thomas of the Hucknall Dispatch reports: Personal files of more than 100 parents and children were left behind in an apparently shocking disregard for privacy when a Hucknall nursery moved premises. The discovery was made at the derelict former site of the Rocking Horse Day Nursery, on Watnall Road, after a tip-off to the…

Erika Martinez reports in the NY Post: Two information specialists at a Brooklyn hospital stand accused of swiping patient information to open bogus credit-card accounts and shop online while working. Jessica Paul, 23, and Jessica Darden, 20, of Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, accessed patient files and ran the names through a credit-check Web…

Andrew Burger writes: Is HIPAA proving effective in protecting the privacy of individuals’ personally identifiable health information? And are the resulting accounting and reporting systems proving manageable for the diversity of healthcare practitioners and administrators? Is it getting in the way of medical treatment and research or facilitating it? CRM Buyer spoke with a range…

Aaron Brilbeck of NBC24 reports: Every four seconds, someone’s identity is stolen in America. Most of us go to great lengths to protest our identities, often shredding personal documents at home. And medical professionals are required to do the same. But we found out, many aren’t. NBC 24’s Aaron Brilbeck went dumpster diving in the…