Dana Blankenhorn blogs on ZDnet: The New England Journal of Medicine has entered the debate over Personal Health Records (PHRs) with four articles, all with different perspectives, all with the full text behind their registration firewall. So let’s cut to the chase. I’ve seen this play out in a host of industries over the years – news,…
Author: Dissent
State law jeopardizes medical privacy for school employees
A press release from the Michigan Education Association: Medical privacy for public school employees in at least one district has been jeopardized by a new state law, a troubling twist in the continuing controversy over Public Act 106. Scores of districts have sought bids from prospective health insurers since P.A. 106 took effect, as the…
Ca: St. Joe's patient files found in dumpster behind coffee shop
John Burman of the Hamilton Spectator reports: St. Joseph’s Healthcare will tell nearly a dozen patients today their private health information has been found in a garbage dumpster behind an Etobicoke coffee shop. Copies of patient records made by a resident physician at the hospital in 2001 turned up strewn around a fenced dumpster behind…
Information on thousands of UM patients stolen
John Dorschner of the Miami Herald reports: The confidential information of tens of thousands of University of Miami patients was stolen last month when thieves took a case out of a vehicle used by a private off-site storage company, UM said Thursday morning ” Anyone who has been a patient of a University of Miami…
Nurse pleads guilty to privacy violation
Carolyne Park reports in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: A Trumann woman who pleaded guilty to disclosing a patient’s health information is the first person in Arkansas to be convicted under a 5-year-old federal law designed to protect patient privacy, authorities said Wednesday. Andrea Smith, a 25-year-old licensed practical nurse, pleaded guilty to wrongfully disclosing a patient’s…
Warning on Storage of Health Records
Steve Lohr writes in the New York Times: In an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, two leading researchers warn that the entry of big companies like Microsoft and Google into the field of personal health records could drastically alter the practice of clinical research and raise new challenges to the privacy of…