From HHS, an update on the Medical Informatics Engineering breach of 2015 that resulted in a multi-state lawsuit (the first of its kind) in December, 2018: Medical Informatics Engineering, Inc. (MIE) has paid $100,000 to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and has agreed take corrective…
Category: Health Data
TX: HHS joins medical records dump investigation
Jacob Rascon reports: With the help of Tomball Police, the United States Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights is investigating the illegal dumping of thousands of medical records. The more than 20 boxes of records belonged to former Today’s Vision patients and employees, including their Social Security numbers. Read more on…
Cancer Treatment Centers of America notifies patients after phishing attack on employee email account
Cancer Treatment Centers of America has been sending notification letters to patients whose protected health information was in an employee email account that was compromised by a phishing attack. The employee works at the Southeastern Regional Medical Center. The attack took place on March 10, 2019, and the attacker was potentially able to access the…
Medical Insurance Fraud: Doctors’ identity info for sale on dark web marketplace
There have been numerous estimates over the years about how much a patient’s information sells for on dark web marketplaces. But what about a doctor’s information? If you had the necessary documentation on a physician who could bill electronically for their services, how much could you make by sending fraudulent bills to Medicare or insurers?…
Australians’ Medicare details illegally sold on darknet – two years after breach exposed
Paul Karp reports: Australians’ Medicare details are still being illegally offered for sale on the darknet, almost two years after Guardian Australia revealed the serious privacy breach. Screenshots of the Empire Market, provided to Guardian Australia, show the vendor Medicare Machine has rebranded as Medicare Madness, offering Medicare details for $US21. Read more on Guardian…
Seven months after learning of a breach, UCSD still has not notified HIV research participants whose privacy was breached
Brad Racino and Jill Castellano report on what sounds like either willful or negligent handling of highly sensitive information of research participants bu a non-profit participating in some university-funded research. In either event, the university was notified of a breach in October and STILL hasn’t notified the research participants with HIV whose data was available…