Category: Health Data

The following notice is linked from Allina Health‘s home page: Allina Health is committed to protecting the privacy of our patients’ personal information. Regrettably, this notice concerns an incident involving some of that information. A certified medical assistant at an Allina Health clinic viewed patients’ personal health information unnecessarily. Only those caregivers with a role…

I’ve occasionally noted the problems that may arise following a natural disaster. Here’s a case where a health service did its best to ensure patient care following a massive outage due to fire. Although they had a plan in place,  the commissioner’s investigation found that the plan was not sufficiently comprehensive, was not understood by…

In April, I noted that the Burnett Practice had signed an undertaking with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after an email account they used to notify patients of upcoming appointments was hacked. Today, the ICO posted a summary of their follow-up to ensure that the practice complied with the undertaking. Given that the follow-up actions by…

Associated Press reports that an arrest warrant has been for a transient who police say stole two laptop computers from AHMC that contained SSN and personal information of 729,000 patients. Update: Christopher Lee Brown has been arrested.  

Law360.com reports that AvMed will pay $3 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed after the 2009 theft of laptops with information on 1.2 million people.  Previous coverage of the AvMed breach on this blog linked from here. As I commented recently, this breach appears to be a still-open investigation on HHS’s breach tool,…

A few days ago, I noted a privacy breach that left the victim considering moving out of the area. Here’s yet another insider privacy breach involving a hospital where the affected patient is considering moving. Michelle Duff reports: Hutt Hospital receptionists nosed through the medical notes of a surrogate mother 20 times but were allowed…