The Veterans Affairs Illiana Health Care System recently notified 518 veterans that sensitive personal information was not properly safeguarded. Veterans were informed that an appointment book listing their last names and last four digits of their Social Security numbers was discovered missing on July 14 and has not been found. “Our top priority is to…
Category: Health Data
Health industry lacks patient data safeguards: poll
Alina Selyukh reports: New technologies are flooding into the healthcare world, but the industry is not adequately prepared to protect patients from data breaches, according to a report published on Thursday. A vast majority of hospitals, doctors, pharmacies and insurers are eager to adapt to increasingly digital patient data. However, less than half are addressing…
AL: Man unknowingly 'buys' medical records
Hannah Mask reports: When Athens native Bobby Roberts placed a bid of more than $1,000 for the contents of a delinquent storage unit in Florence, he said he thought he was buying medical equipment and maybe old office files. But on Sept. 10, when he opened the 20 or so boxes in the unit at…
MD: X-Ray Films Stolen From Good Samaritan Hospital
Not the first time we’ve seen a breach like this and likely, it won’t be the last: Barrels of X-ray film set to be destroyed were stolen from Good Samaritan Hospital in Baltimore by a man posing as a vendor employee, police said. According to a Baltimore City police report, officers were called to the…
Did AssureCare Risk Management have another hacking incident?
Last month I noted a breach involving AssureCare Risk Management (ARM) that affected employees and their dependents at Reznick Group. ARM had notified Reznick that there had been a series of attempted network intrusions coming from IPs overseas and even domestically. In response to the intrusions, ARM contracted with Kroll to investigate the attacks that…
Are medical-data breaches overreported?
Jay Cline writes: The Eli Lilly employee whose programming glitch exposed the e-mail addresses of almost 700 Prozac users to each other didn’t know he was making history. Since that day in June 2001, hundreds more US healthcare organizations have reported medical-data breaches. As a result of those reports, federal and state health agencies have…