Beezy Marsh reports: Late abortions of “less than perfect” foetuses are the subject of a secrecy row with the Government. It centres on mothers who opt for termination because their unborn babies have been diagnosed with conditions such as club foot and cleft palate. Doctors say such conditions can usually be corrected by surgery. The…
Author: Dissent
DaVita burglary: patient info stolen
For what appears to be the second time this year, DVA Renal Healthcare (DaVita) has had to notify current or former patients that their data was stolen. In the most recent incident, a DaVita facility in Florida was burglarized and desktop computers were stolen. Although the computers were reportedly password-protected, there was no assertion that…
CIGNA reports disk with medical claims data missing
On October 10th, Joyce Musante, Privacy Office Lead for CIGNA, notified the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that a disk sent to a governmental agency by a certified courier on June 20th had been lost. The unnamed courier notified CIGNA on September 9th that the package had been damaged and the contents were missing. Despite an…
Oops – Highmark sends enrollee data to wrong customer
According to a report provided to the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, an employee mistakenly transmitted an encrypted Excel file with enrollment data for Reed Smith to the another group customer. The file containing names, addresses, dates of birth, identification numbers (which are the individuals’ Social Security numbers), type of insurance contract, effective date, and group…
Patient breaches and P2P networks
Over on The Breach Blog, Evan Francen has written up some of the P2P breaches uncovered by Red Team Protection. It makes for fascinating reading, and a cautionary tale. If you have any patient or confidential information on your computer, installing or running file-sharing programs may result in you sharing much more than you intended…
Medical ID Theft
Jennifer Nelson reports: When Brandon Sharp, 37, of Spring, Tex., applied for his first home loan, his lender called with bad news: The $20,000 in unpaid hospital bills on his credit report had damaged his chances for a mortgage. But Sharp hadn’t had any health problems. He was a victim of medical ID theft. Someone…