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…
Author: Dissent
How Personal Health Records Could Make Care Less Efficient
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….
HIMSS Survey Points to ''Access'' As the Number One IT Security Concern
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…
(update) Bank of Ireland laptop theft affected 30,000
The number of Bank of Ireland customers affected by the theft of laptops last year has risen to over 30,000, RTÉ News reports. You can read more on this at RTÉ News. Because the records also include medical information, it is not clear how many customers have now had their medical information stolen in this…
FL: Possible security breach concerns patients
There may have been a serious security breach at University Community Hospital in Tampa. A Lutz man who was discharged Thursday says he was given medical records and other personal information belonging to four other patients. Eddie Covington says he discovered the documents Saturday mixed in with his own discharge papers. He told us he…
Virginia Beach: Pretty good health privacy
Brian Robinson reports in Government Health IT: When sharing health information, government agencies must abide by rules established under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which does not allow such information to be transmitted unprotected via public networks. That seems like a simple rule, but schemes that provide secure sharing, such as public-key…