Sophie Borland reports: NHS staff are exposing highly sensitive information about patients up to five times a week by posting messages about them on Facebook, discussing illnesses in public or losing their medical files. Figures show that in the past 12 months doctors, nurses and admin workers breached patients’ confidentiality some 802 times. And nearly…
Category: Health Data
UK: Patients’ details found in public bins, University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire signs undertaking
University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust breached the Data Protection Act by losing patients’ medical information on two separate occasions, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said today. The ICO’s action and press release was intended to make the point that even “small” breaches in terms of numbers are important and can indicate a pattern…
Leak of Emory patient records could affect thousands
David Ibata reports on a breach that I covered on DataBreaches.net with a follow-up. In today’s developments, we learn that the breach also affected a healthcare entity: Nine Emory Healthcare patients have become victims of identity theft in a case that could affect the records of as many as 7,000 people, Channel 2 Action News reported…
SA: Worker: Hospital told boss my HIV status
A domestic worker has complained to the SA [South African] Human Rights Commission about hospital staff telling her employer she is HIV positive, The Times reported on Monday. “You are dying and pregnant… I know… the lab told me you are sick,” her boss reportedly yelled at her when she arrived at work after spending…
PA: Ambulance records dumped
Tom Ragan reports: Boxes and file folders containing hundreds of sheets with personal information of employees and former patients of the Hazleton Community Ambulance Association were tossed in a city dumpster at the South Side Fire Station on Saturday. […] Several boxes and folders contained trip sheets for ambulance calls, including information on each patient….
Five months after its vendor is notified of data loss, Concordia Plan Services notifies those affected
The recent TRICARE/SAIC breach involved the theft of tapes that were en route to being converted/encrypted. Here’s another case where older-formatted files sent out for conversion have been involved in data loss, although in this case, the data were not stolen from an employee’s car but were lost by a delivery service. And while the…