The Department of Veterans Affairs has released its monthly report to Congress on data breaches. For the period August 30 – October 3, the reported incidents included: 33 incidents involving mis-mailed prescription medication packages by the Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy [out of 7,144,426 total packages (10,510,547 total prescriptions) and 60 Mis-Handling incidents (these might involve…
Category: Health Data
CIO Fired After Others May Have Accessed Her EHR
Gerry Higgins writes: A prominent CIO of a regional hospital system encountered the limitations of HIPAA and so-called “Protected Health Information (PHI)” when her boss fired her after a short medical leave of absence. After years working without taking vacation, a family catastrophe that affected her health prompted her to take a medical leave of…
A third of Spanish hospitals breach the Data Protection Act
One in three Spanish hospitals are in breach of the Data Protection behave, disturbing research has revealed. Some 30 per cent of public hospitals have no measures in place to prevent the loss of, or unauthorised access to, patients’ data during transport or whilst filed. A further 40 per cent of state hospitals, and 15…
Two charged with credit union theft that allegedly used Navy clinic data
Another case allegedly involving theft of patient data for fraud. John Wharton reports from Maryland: St. Mary’s grand jurors have charged two county residents with stealing from the Navy Federal Credit Union, in a scheme that law officers allege misappropriated the personal information of Navy health clinic patients. Donna Mason, a 41-year-old Lexington Park woman,…
Data breach in 2005 fueled a long-running massive Medicare fraud scheme
An indictment unveiled in New York today concerning a huge Medicare fraud scheme reveals how both medical professionals and patients may have their identities stolen in furtherance of fraud. And in this case, a data breach years ago provided much of the identity information needed. William K. Rashbaum and Michael Wilson report: An Armenian-American crime…
Is computing healthcare data breach statistics a waste of time?
Over on Technology Liberation Front, Jim Harper responded to my post that asked what can we learn from the first year of HHS breach reports. He starts by taking me to task for seemingly glossing over what he sees as important considerations: …. The post gives extremely light treatment to the possibility—indeed, the likelihood—of noncompliance…