HEALTH chiefs apologised after admitting they don’t know what happened to the nursing records of thousands of patients stored on a computer database. The machine, containing a range of sensitive details including patients’ individual ailments, was supposed to be destroyed during an upgrade at the Gospel Oak Health Centre, in Lismore Circus. But bosses said…
Author: Dissent
Medical identity theft will be a target of ID study center
Kathryn Foxhall reports: A coalition of public and private groups, including the Department of Defense and the U.S. Secret Service, will open a center at Indiana University study identity theft, including the growing area of health care fraud. The 19 partners in the Center for Applied Identity Management Research (CAIMR) include IBM, LexisNexis, Lockheed Martin,…
New health-care privacy laws heighten need for HIPAA compliance in California
Jaikumar Vijayan reports: Health care organizations that operate in California have two more good reasons to be sure that they comply with the data security and privacy requirements of the federal HIPAA law. Last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law two pieces of legislation that significantly increase state fines for security and privacy…
FTC cracks down on medical identity theft
Ann Zeigler reports: The FTC plans to issue a new consumer protection rule that will take on the issue of medical identity theft, a growing concern now that identity thieves have recognized that medical records are rich sources of financial information that can be used to obtain credit with someone else’s history. Alternate forms of…
Calif. Judge Bans Anna Nicole Smith Breast Surgery Videotape
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…
UK: Records abandoned despite warnings
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…