Scott Daugherty reports that two former Sentara Healthcare nurse’s aides have been indicted on charges of stealing the identities of at least a dozen patients as part of a tax refund fraud scheme. Several of the victims were patients at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital and all were reportedly patients of Sentara medical facilities in…
Category: Health Data
Firewall error by M2ComSys exposed 32,000 patients' information (Update 1)
A vendor’s firewall error has resulted in approximately 32,000 patients in 48 states being notified that some of their protected health information was exposed on the Internet. The vendor was medical transcription service M2ComSys, contracted by Cogent Healthcare. The latter provides physicians called hospitalists to hospitals operated by Genesis Health Systems. Neither Genesis Health Systems…
Indiana: No data breach after stolen laptop traced to Indy home
Stephen Dean reports: State officials said no data was breached after a state worker’s stolen laptop was tracked down to a home on the east side of Indianapolis. A longtime employee with the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) told police her state-issued laptop was stolen from the back seat of her car at a…
Privacy breach prompts retraction of three papers from the trauma literature
A group of international psychology researchers is retracting three papers in the wake of revelations that they failed to adequately safeguard the identities of the patients who participated in the studies. So far, only one article has been formally retracted. That article, “Combining biofeedback and Narrative Exposure Therapy for persistent pain and PTSD in refugees:…
You’ve got mail: Someone else’s medical test results
Misdirecting e-mail with PHI is bad. Misdirecting it to a reporter, well, that’s just begging for bad press. Carolyn Y. Johnson reports: The first e-mail came at the end of June. It was from a doctor’s office in another state—a large cardiology group. The note listed the name of a test. It listed the full…
Retinal Consultants Medical Group notifies patients after laptop with PHI was stolen from their office
On June 7, Vitreo-Retinal Medical Group, Inc. (dba Retinal Consultants Medical Group) discovered that a laptop computer which was a component of a diagnostic imaging machine, was stolen sometime after the office closed on June 5. The laptop contained unsecured PHI including patient names, dates of birth, gender, race, and OCT (optical coherence tomography) images. In…