Paul Shukovsky reports: A Belfair couple pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to stealing identities and using trickery to obtain confidential medical, tax and employment information for private investigators who paid them fees for the information. Emilio Torrella, 36, and Brandy Torella, 27, face a mandatory-minimum sentence of two years for aggravated identity theft, plus…
Category: Health Data
CT: ID information stolen from Saint Mary's Hospital
Marc Silvistrini of the Republican-American reports: A former Saint Mary’s Hospital employee has been charged by police in the theft of names and social security numbers of a half dozen patients, a hospital official and state police said Tuesday. State police told the hospital the thefts were confined to the Endoscopy Department and affect the…
UF warns patients of security breach
University of Florida officials will be notifying about 1,900 patients of a UF plastic surgeon that their private health information might have been breached after the information was managed and disposed of improperly. Dr. Francis D. Ong, a UF assistant professor of plastic surgery at the UF College of Medicine-Jacksonville, stored unsecured digital photographs of…
NHS disc containing sensitive data lost
Caroline Gammell reports in the Telegraph: A computer disc containing the medical records of more than 38,000 NHS patients went missing when it was sent to a software company to be backed up – in case the records got lost. The information, which dates back 10 years, was mislaid somewhere between London and Sandown Health…
Cyber criminals overseas steal U.S. electronic health records
Bob Brewin of NextGov reports: In 2004, when Bush administration officials unveiled a project to provide every American with an electronic health record by 2014, they pledged to put privacy and security first. But the discovery in April of stolen health records containing sensitive medical information about U.S. patients on a computer server in Malaysia…
Hospitals underrate malicious intent in data breaches
Pamela Lewis Dolan reports in the May 26 issue of AMNews: Hospitals generally are well aware of what they have to do under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to ensure the security of patient data. They are also aware that their own employees might be the ones who breach that security. However, hospitals…