Ebara Technologies, Inc. Employee Medical Benefit Plan has recently notified the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office that a break-in at one of their vendors resulted in the theft of computers that may have contained protected health information of former and current plan participants. From the description of the incident, it appears that the unnamed…
Category: Health Data
Preying on Patients
Kristen Gerencher of the Wall Street Journal reports: […] At Blue Shield of California, which has 3.3 million insured members, fraud investigators have seen about 10 medical identity theft cases over the last 18 months, said Michael Brandt, senior manager of the company’s special investigations in El Dorado Hills, Calif. The incidents so far have…
UK: Ambulance service loses details of nearly million people
Simon Johnson of Telegraph reports: A computer disk containing details of nearly a million people who dialled 999 has been lost, an ambulance service has admitted. The information was supposed to be couriered by TNT from Scotland to Manchester two weeks ago, but never arrived at its destination and a search has failed to find…
UCLA Health System Facilities Are Cited by State for Patient Privacy Breaches; Former Employee Is Charged Under HIPAA
 : There’s really nothing new in the report that we haven’t reported here before, but REPORT ON PATIENT PRIVACY has a detailed article on the UCLA privacy breaches: Three UCLA Health System facilities were cited for deficiencies by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) for staff members’ snooping in high-profile patient records. And one…
Boston Medical Center settles charge of deceptive marketing
Boston Medical Center HealthNet and Boston Medical Center Corporation have agreed to pay the state $562,000 to settle charges that BMC gave private patient information to its HealthNet insurance plan for marketing purposes that the state described as deceptive. According to WBUR, BMC sent a letter to 2,600 patients who were insured by competing plans. …
Patients’ attitudes to the summary care record: Security concerns must be put in context
From the British Medical Journal: Patients’ attitudes to the summary care record: Security concerns must be put in context J.E.F. Fitzgerald, A. Nikkar-Esfahani, A.A.B. Jamjoom, K.K. Shah, A.G. Acheson (16 June 2008) […] Human links in the patient record chain are far more vulnerable to error, and we have been alarmed at the ease…