Gina Pothoff reports: Some 260 patients with records in the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department will receive notification letters explaining that a Health Care Center employee illegally accessed their personal health information. The department announced the unauthorized data breach Wednesday, saying a staff member accessed electronic information for an unapproved academic research project. Read more on…
Category: Health Data
Cottage Health Notifying 11,000 Patients Whose Records Were Exposed
Tom Bolton reports that Cottage Health, which suffered a HIPAA breach in 2013 due to a vendor error (by InSync) that exposed over 50,000 patients‘ information, has suffered another exposure breach: Cottage Health’s efforts to protect the confidentiality of hospital patient records suffered a setback earlier this fall when one of its computer servers was found to be…
University of Rochester Medical Center settles NYS Attorney General charges stemming from HIPAA breach
Back in May, I noted that University of Rochester Medical Center was notifying 3,000 patients because a departing employee had taken patient information with her for her new employer to use to recruit patients. Now NYS Attorney General Schneiderman has announced a settlement with URMC over the HIPAA breach. The settlement requires the center to pay a $15,000…
State law claims in Anthem breach tossed because ERISA pre-empts
And yet another blow to would-be plaintiffs in data breach litigation: you can’t raise claims under state law if ERISA applies and covers all the claims. Joe Lustig reports: For the second time this year, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has ruled that state law claims arising from Anthem’s February data…
OH: Thousands Of Medical Records Containing Confidential Info Found In Dumpster
Maureen Kocot reports: A good Samaritan says he was surprised when he discovered thousands of documents marked confidential in a dumpster. 10TV examined the documents and found medical records containing patients’ social security numbers, dates of birth, as well as detailed information about medical conditions and prescriptions. […] The Ohio Medical Board says it has…
IL: Mailing error by contractor discloses ‘limited’ personal info of 3,000 Centegra patients
Stephen DiBenedetto reports: Medical bills detailing “limited” personal information of 3,000 Centegra Health System patients recently were sent to the wrong addresses because of a mailroom error at a third-party contractor, a Centegra spokeswoman said. The mailing error happened Nov. 2 at MedAssets, a Georgia-based vendor Centegra contracts, during routine maintenance. A setting on automatic…