WNBC reports: Sen. Charles Schumer said the government is risking seniors’ financial information by putting their full Social Security numbers on their Medicare cards. He said Medicare is facilitating identity theft and he’s pushing a bill that would spend $500 million to issue new cards without the numbers. Is the problem that the numbers are…
Category: Health Data
U.S. electronic health-record standards agreed
Kim Dixon of Reuters reports: U.S. consumer groups, insurers and privacy advocates together with Google Inc and Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday they have agreed to standards intended to speed adoption of personal electronic health records. That’s nice, but as you read further into the report, you read that: “A policy and privacy logjam ……
Illinois Dept. of Human Services breach
On February 29, 2008, the Rockford Family Community Resource Center of the Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS) Division of Human Capital Development (HCD) was notified by the police that in the course of an investigation, they had discovered 12 boxes of files with client records. One of the residents of the home being investigated…
Protected health information at risk; Ebara Technologies notifies participants of computer theft (update 1)
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…
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…
Reps. Barton, Dingell To Introduce Legislation That Aims To Spur Nationwide Adoption of Electronic Health Records
From the Kaiser Daily Health Report: House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair John Dingell (D-Mich.) and ranking member Joe Barton (R-Texas) on Tuesday plan to introduce a bill that would promote the adoption of a nationwide electronic health record system, CongressDaily reports. According to CongressDaily, the lawmakers last month released a draft of the…