Olivia Carville reports: The first person ever prosecuted under Ontario’s health privacy law for allegedly prying into almost 6,000 patient records no longer faces charges because of the “curious” way the Crown handled the case, a court has ruled. Against a backdrop of growing calls for more prosecutions under this law, the potentially precedent-setting case…
Category: Health Data
Former Aetna employee arrested; found in possession of members’ identity information
Aetna Insurance has also reported a breach in recent months, but unlike the Anthem and Premera Blue Cross breaches, the Aetna breach does not appear to have been a massive one. In a letter dated January 8, the insurance company notified the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that six Maryland residents were among those being notified that their information had…
MD: Mailing error exposes 350 patients’ bills to other patients
Here’s one you won’t see on HHS’s public breach tool, because it’s less than 500 patients. Harford Surgical Associates in Bel Air, Maryland notified the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that due to a mailing error on October 16, 2014, patients received up to three other patients’ billing statements. The statements included the patients’ names, addresses, telephone…
St. Louis County Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Anthem BCBS
Not surprisingly, there are a slew of class action lawsuits filed against Anthem over their major breach. I was surprised, however, to see a government agency suing. Bill Reker reports that attorney Maureen Brady, with the Kansas City law firm of McShane and Brady has filed the suit. Read more on CBS.
UK: Former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse banned for confidentiality breach
ChesterFirst reports: A former sexual health adviser at the Countess of Chester Hospital has been suspended from nursing after he disclosed details of a patient’s illness to a third party. Mark Henry Newman, 54, formerly of Acorn Court, Upton, has been suspended for nine months by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) after he breached…
FL: Federal Jury Finds Husband And Wife Guilty Of Operating A Clinic To Defraud Medicare
Here’s another case where patients knowingly participated in a Medicare fraud scheme, so I wouldn’t consider them victims (even though law enforcement never seems to prosecute them as criminals or co-conspirators). I think that the real victims here were the doctors whose identity information was misused to support the scheme and the insurance carrier who paid…