Trevor Pettiford reports that discarded medical records were found unsecured at a county landfill facility in St. Petersburg, Florida. The records, complete with names, addresses, and family histories, were discovered by a man dumping bulk trash at the Pinellas County Solid Waste facility at 3095 114th Avenue North in St. Petersburg. They apparently came from the…
Category: Health Data
Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center ‘Victim of Cyber Attack’
NBCLA reports: A Southern California hospital was a victim of a cyber attack, interfering with day-to-day operations, the hospital’s president and CEO said. Staff at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center began noticing “significant IT issues and declared an internal emergency” on Friday, said hospital President and CEO Allen Stefanek. A doctor who did not want to…
VA: Fourth time’s the charm for fired UVA nurse
In most cases, I’d want a medical center to discipline or terminate an employee who snooped in a patient’s records. But here’s an unusual case where a medical center improperly fired an employee who had been authorized by the patient – who was both an employee and her ex-spouse – to look at his records….
GA: 911 dispatcher fired for sharing caller’s personal information on Facebook
Dan Kennedy reports: A Catoosa County 911 dispatcher was fired Friday morning for sharing on Facebook the private information of at least one person who called 911. Holly Dowis was terminated Friday following an internal investigation into her conduct while on the job. A Channel 3 investigation found Dowis sent a screenshot to Facebook friends…
Aide To Stephen McNeil, Nova Scotia Premier, Broke Privacy Laws: Report
Michael Tutton and Michael MacDonald report: The office of Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil broke privacy laws when chief of staff Kirby McVicar publicly released sensitive medical information about a former cabinet minister, the province’s privacy commissioner says. McVicar resigned Nov. 24 after stating in several media interviews that Andrew Younger had a brain tumour…
Stolen Oregon Health & Science University hard drive contained babies’ protected health information
Data breach incident December 2015 involving stolen OHSU hard drive 02/10/16 Portland, Ore. On December 6, 2015, an OHSU research student’s car was broken into and a hard drive was stolen. The hard drive may have contained health information about Neonatal Intensive Care Unit patients admitted to the unit in 2013 who were enrolled in a…