The following AP story is a follow-up to a story they reported last month: A former Rhode Island Hospital security guard and three former RadioShack workers have been charged in a scheme to steal the identity of hospital patients. A federal grand jury indictment filed Wednesday alleges Michael Bermudez obtained patients’ names, dates of birth…
Category: Health Data
Dell to Offer Online Health Records
Dell has announced plans to go live this month with personal health records for as many of its 25,000 U.S. employees who want to use them. The company announced the initiative with WebMD April 10, at a health care forum attended by Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt.”The widespread adoption of health…
The Man Who Lost His Name and His Genetic Identity
For privacy advocates, the name “Eric Drew” immediately evokes a few images: a man expected to die of leukemia, a sleazy lab tech stealing his details and using it for ID theft, and Drew doing battle — against the leukemia, against the ID thief, and then against credit reporting agencies who refused to clear his…
Personal information swiped from Norfolk case worker's car
From WVEC.com: The personal information of about 30 clients of Norfolk’s Community Services Board was compromised when a case worker’s briefcase was stolen. Officials say the briefcase was left in the worker’s car in a Virginia Beach parking garage on March 24, but someone smashed a window and stole it. The case worker violated the…
White House science and tech panel will call for broader privacy law
Nancy Ferris reports in Government Health IT: The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology is expected to join the chorus of organizations calling for changes in federal privacy rules to increase patients’ comfort levels with e-health records. At a meeting with President Bush April 8, council members told the president that “privacy legislation…
Effectiveness of medical privacy law is questioned
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar writes in the Los Angeles Times: When Congress passed a federal medical privacy law more than a decade ago, it was hailed as a new level of protection for patients nationwide. But even though the government has received about 34,000 complaints of privacy violations since it officially began enforcing the law five years…