Author: Dissent

In an update to a previous story, Scott Daughterty of The Capital reports: The Garrett County woman didn’t have back pain. She didn’t visit hospitals in 11 states to get prescription pain killers to help her cope. Still, federal prosecutors said, the hospitals kept sending her bills demanding payment for those medications and services. One…

Kim S. Nash writes in CIO: Doctors can’t cure the common cold and health care IT managers apparently can’t stop the common data breach. Twenty-one of the 101 of the breaches tracked so far this year by information security group Attrition.org occurred at health care organizations. Well, that’s not right, as I pointed out in…

Sarah Rubenstein writes in the Wall Street Journal: When it comes to protecting the privacy of patients’ computerized information, the main threat the health-care industry faces isn’t from hackers, but from itself. Read the full story at WSJ

The Concord Regional Visiting Nurse Association reported [pdf] to the New Hampshire Department of Justice that a laptop was stolen from a staff member’s vehicle on April 16. The laptop contained birth date and social security numbers for 15 clients. CRVNA believes that the risk of ID theft is low because of the three levels…

Jacob Goldstein writes in the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog: High hopes are afoot for personal health records, online homes where patients can store their medical information to take from doctor to doctor and keep track of things like prescriptions and test results. Microsoft and Google, among others, are jumping in the patient-controlled record pool….

From the press release: According to a survey conducted at the HIMSS 2008 Annual Conference and Exhibition, 64 percent of respondents cited “access” as their number one IT security concern, highlighting the importance of controlling user access to clinical systems and applications in healthcare environments. Additionally, 60 percent of attendees surveyed cite the threat of…