Cost and security concerns about bringing health care record keeping into the 21st century through electronic health records (EHR)have led to a call for an effective regulatory and oversight system from a pair of Case Western Reserve University professors. “Electronic information can be illicitly accessed from anywhere and transmitted across the globe quickly, cheaply, and…
Author: Dissent
Tally of improperly accessed UCLA patient records tops 1,000
Rong-Gong Lin II reports: The number of patients whose hospital records were improperly accessed by employees at the UCLA Hospital System has topped 1,000, state officials said Wednesday. Kathleen Billingsley, director of the California Department of Public Health’s Center for Healthcare Quality, said the records of 1,041 patients have been breached, up from 939 in…
CA: State ends review of privacy breaches at hospitals
SHAYA TAYEFE MOHAJER reports: The state has ended its investigation into privacy breaches at UCLA hospitals, where celebrities such as Britney Spears and Farrah Fawcett had their medical records illegally accessed by employees. Six state reports were released on the matter over the last several months—the last one Wednesday—detailing a widespread practice of workers taking…
Lexington woman accused of ID theft
A Lexington woman working for a home health care agency is accused of taking a patient’s ID and trying to withdraw money from her bank account, according to felony charges filed Wednesday in Cleveland County District Court. Source – The Norman Transcript
Health care data security breaches in the U.S.
Kevin Prince reports: New laws and regulations regarding data security breaches and disclosure laws affect the way in which health care organizations do business. This study provides a review of the scope and impact of data security breaches in the health care industry in an effort to encourage proactive modification to risk mitigation technologies, policies,…
UK: Patient data leaves NHS – officials answer our questions
Nearly 300 million confidential medical records have transferred officially from the government to an academic organisation outside the NHS, Computer Weekly has learned. The transferred records contain patient-identifiable information on nearly every stay by patients in hospitals in England, and visits to an accident and emergency department. Also within the transferred records are 215 million confidential…