Author: Dissent

The Associated Press reports; A federal judge says Sen. Ted Stevens can probe the mental health of the government’s star witness in the corruption trial against the Alaska icon. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan says government witness Bill Allen must turn over his medical records dealing with his 2001 motorcycle accident. Allen suffered brain damage…

Eithne Donnellan reports: FIVE LAPTOPS, at least three of them with patients’ personal details, have been stolen from the Health Service Executive (HSE) over the past year, it was confirmed yesterday. Details of the theft of one of the laptops from a staff member’s home were reported last week, but yesterday the HSE confirmed that…

  From the GAO report released yesterday: Summary Although advances in information technology (IT) can improve the quality and other aspects of health care, the electronic storage and exchange of personal health information introduces risks to the privacy of that information. In January 2007, GAO reported on the status of efforts by the Department of…

All practices in England and Wales will be required to use the NHS number as the national unique patient identifier by this time next year, following a new Safer Practice Notice (SPN) issued today (18 September 2008). The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), together with NHS Connecting for Health (in England) and Informing Healthcare (in…

Duane Bourne reports: Matthew Wiseman, a registered nurse who pilfered a dead patient’s credit card, was ordered to serve a month in jail on Wednesday. The 24-year-old man, who pleaded guilty to credit card theft and credit card fraud, used the card of Michael Puopolo in March to buy a laptop computer hours after the…

On July 10th, 2008 thieves broke into the office of Summer Avenue Chiropractic Clinic and stole the computers used to conduct business. According to the letter sent to the affected patients, the computers contained encrypted personal information. Source and documentation – The Breach Blog