Mark Sullivan reports: A new report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) says that the U.S. Coast Guard holds plenty of personally identifiable health information in its servers but lacks a strong approach to dealing with privacy issues. The report grew from a DHS audit that focused on practices and procedures for…
Category: Health Data
Former program director of Louisiana Health and Rehabilitation Options indicted on health care fraud, identify theft
Quincy Hodges reports: A former Louisiana Health and Rehabilitation Options program director was indicted on multiple charges of health care fraud and aggravated identity theft, U.S. Attorney Walt Green said in a news release on Tuesday. A federal grand jury returned an indictment charging 49-year-old Shanta Barnes, of Baton Rouge, with obtaining oxycodone by fraud,…
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield discloses that hack in June 2014 affected 1.1 million members
From CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield: On May 20, 2015, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield (CareFirst) announced that the company has been the target of a sophisticated cyberattack. The attackers gained limited, unauthorized access to a single CareFirst database. This was discovered as a part of the company’s ongoing Information Technology (IT) security efforts in the wake of…
NY: Bellevue Hospital notifying 3,300 patients of breach
Jacobi Medical Center wasn’t the only hospital run by the Health & Hospitals Corporation that reported a breach on April 28. Bellevue Hospital Center also reported one: The incident in question occurred on January 15, 2015 and was discovered on February 27, 2015 when, in the course of HHC’s monitoring of outgoing emails, we identified…
CA: Internist notifying patients following office burglary
A San Pablo internist, Sharon J. Jones, M.D., is notifying patients after burglars stole patient files in both electronic and paper formats. The burglary occurred on March 20, and according to Dr. Jones, “approximately 17 patient charts were stolen along with one desktop computer, two laptops and our server.” The burglary was discovered the next…
NY: Jacobi Medical Center notifies 90,060 patients after employee emailed PHI to her personal account and new email address at another employer
Jacobi Medical Center, part of the New York City Health & Hospitals Corporation, issued this statement on April 28: The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) this week began to notify about 90,000 HHC patients about the possible disclosure of some of their protected health information (PHI) that may have occurred when a…