Protenus has released their Breach Barometer report for March. The report is based on 39 incidents that reportedly affected 1,519,521 patients’ records. As noted in recent months, we’ve reached that unhappy stage where we are seeing an average of one or more breach disclosures every day. If this just represented greater transparency, that would be great, but it…
Category: Health Data
Metro Community Provider Network settles HHS breach charges for $400,000 and corrective action plan
HHS announced another settlement today. This one stemmed from a 2011 incident that was previously covered on this site. Once again, the take-home message is that you need to do a risk assessment, and you need a risk management plan commensurate with your risk assessment. In this case, there was no prior risk assessment, and…
ECMC officials remain mute on cause of computer shutdown
Stephen T. Watson reports: Erie County Medical Center officials say a virus that has shut down the hospital’s entire computer network since early Sunday morning has not affected the care delivered to patients or nursing home residents. The hospital has accepted all incoming patients and has moved ahead with all scheduled surgical procedures, said Peter Cutler, an…
Tullamore Hospital patient’s information sent to wrong person after data blunder
If you’re going to misdirect a fax containing patient info, at least try not to misdirect it to the data protection commissioner’s fax number! Justin Kelly reports: A data breach at Tullamore Hospital is among 212 cases revealed today, the Irish Independent have reported. 212 data protection breaches, where patient’s private information was misused or mishandled,…
AU: Optometrists and dentists will know if you’ve had an abortion or mental illness in health record bungle
Gah. Soooo many leaks and breaches are due to default settings that over-share. How hard is it for software to set default settings to NOT share with everyone? C’mon, folks. Sue Dunlevy reports: THE private health records of Australians can be accessed by more than half a million people under the latest bungle with the $2.2…
Leak of diabetic patients’ data highlights risks of giving info to telemarketers
Personal and health information of 918,000 vulnerable seniors was exposed on the Internet for months by a software developer working on a project. No one would have even known about it if the leak hadn’t been found by a guy with “too much time on his hands.” Before you give your personal or health insurance…