Aaron Leaman reports: Prying into patient files cost two Waikato Hospital staff their jobs and prompted two others to resign. Twelve privacy or confidentiality breaches have been committed by Waikato staff since 2012. Offences range from unauthorised snooping on medical records, to misdirected emails. Patient privacy came under the spotlight earlier this month after Auckland District Health Board announced…
Category: Health Data
Mecklenburg County, NC: 1,200 patients impacted by gaffe in responding to public records request
Joe Bruno and Blake Hanson report: County officials mistakenly gave information to two media outlets Monday in response to public records requests about the Health Department’s failure to notify women of abnormal Pap smear results. Channel 9 immediately notified county officials upon discovering the information on a compact disc. Officials said the information did not…
VN: 5,000 health insurance cards issued with incorrect information
VNS reports: Local health insurance authorities of the central province of Nghệ An have issued some 5,000 health insurance cards with wrong personal information, the provincial authority has said. A group of supervisors from the province’s People’s Council released the figure in a report after conducting urgent checks on local health insurance authorities in the…
Washington University School of Medicine hit by phishing attack, patient info may have been accessed
KSDK reports: A third party may have gained unauthorized access to patient information — including names, birth dates and social security numbers — after a phishing attack at Washington University’s medical school. A post on the Washington University School of Medicine website said an employee fell for a phishing email designed to look like an official request…
St. Louis-area health care worker admits fraud, ID theft
AP reports: Sentencing is scheduled for this summer for a Missouri home health care worker who admitted in federal court that she defrauded senior citizens. Twenty-seven-year-old De’Janay Noldon pleaded guilty Monday in St. Louis to one count each of mail fraud and identity theft. Federal prosecutors say that while working early last year as a…
KY: Estill County Chiropractic notifies 5,335 patients of ransomware attack
March 17 – On January 17, 2017, Estill County Chiropractic (“ECC”) discovered that an unauthorized user installed malicious software on its computer system that encrypted patient files. ECC immediately shut down the system. Although ECC was already taking security precautions, ECC replaced the system and included additional security measures. ECC worked diligently to restore files…