Category: Health Data

I received a phone call from OCR this morning to discuss my FOI request for the breach reports HHS is receiving under HITECH regulations.   I had requested electronic copies of the reporting forms breached entities submitted via HHS’s web site.  The conversation was a bit of an eye-opener for me. First, it turns out…

Jason C. Gavejian writes about a hospital breach that is causing waves because of the exorbitant fine the state imposed. Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at StanfordUniversity was fined $250,000 earlier this year by the California Department of Public Health (“CDPH”) for an alleged delay in reporting a breach under California’s health information privacy law. What makes…

Omar Villafranca reports that a winning $60 storage unit auction bid yielded personal and medical information on hundreds of people: But the storage unit also had boxes of sensitive information, including copies of drivers licenses and Social Security cards, credit union reports and financial reports. The letters were addressed to a closed-down nursing facility. The…

Murray Brewster reports: Canada’s Veteran’s ombudsman says he’s asking the country’s privacy watchdog to investigate why his Veterans Affairs file was access hundreds of times. Pat Stogran says he believes private information in those records may have been inappropriately used, much like what happened to another outspoken critic of the department. Sean Bruyea, who prior…

Anemona Hartocollis of the New York Times answers one of the questions I had about the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center breach. Citing a hospital spokesperson, she writes: The mistake was found in early July, after a relative of a patient found information from that patient on the Internet and told the hospital about it. The…