Gary Klien reports in the Marin Independent Journal: A Martinez woman who used another person’s identity to get a $20,000 breast lift and tummy tuck in Greenbrae was sentenced Wednesday to nine months in the Marin County Jail. She nearly got away with it, but a get-well bouquet and a navel itch were her undoing….
Author: Dissent
UK: Patients’ details lost by hospitals
Neil Macfarlane reports in The Northern Echo: PATIENTS’ representatives have spoken of their outrage after scores of confidential files were lost by North-East NHS trusts. The papers include private data such as medical history notes, prescription charts and laboratory results. Among the missing data is a bundle of 19 files that a consultant left in…
UK: Wirral PCT faces local data privacy backlash
Wirral Primary Care Trust has delayed plans to introduce a telephone support service provided by a US contractor, after a local outcry at plans to transfer extracts from patient records to a private company. The proposed new health coaching service, called ‘Wirral Keep Well’, provided by Health Dialog, a US subsidiary of Bupa that provides…
UK: Health board admits losing patients’ data
Steward Paterson of The Herald reports: New controls on computerised data storage have been introduced at a Scottish health authority after equipment containing patients’ sensitive details were lost. Two computer memory sticks were reported as lost or stolen earlier this year by staff at NHS Dumfries and Galloway. New guidelines are now being implemented concerning…
Security Breach: More Laws Needed. Let's Add Health Care
Over on InformationWeek, George Hulme is singing our tune: […] But let’s just stick to health care. More than 1.5 million patient records at hospitals have been exposed by data breaches during 2006 and 2007, according to the 2008 HIMSS Analytics Report: Security of Patient Data, commissioned by Kroll Fraud Solutions. That begs the question:…
Who's reading your medical files today?
Sue A. Blevins of nstitute for Health Freedom in Washington writes in the Christian Science Monitor: How would you feel about your personal health information flowing freely over the Internet between public health officials, healthcare providers, insurance and data clearinghouse companies, and others – without your permission? If this doesn’t sound like a good idea,…