Here’s a follow-up on a breach previously reported. Today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports: Paul C. Pepala, 35, of Monroeville, was sentenced Thursday to one year of probation for disclosing to others information from the files of 19 UPMC Shadyside patients. Mr. Pepala, a Zambian man who is a permanent resident of the U.S., was working as…
Category: Health Data
Training Proposed After TRICARE Breach
Howard Anderson writes: The Department of Defense and two other government agencies have issued a proposed rule designed to help ensure that government contractors provide adequate privacy training to their staff members. The proposal comes in the wake of a recent healthcare information breach incident involving a contractor to TRICARE, the military health program. Read more on GovInfoSecurity. As an…
FBI Probes Sale Of Hospital Patient Information
More on the breach of Florida Hospital patient records by three employees who may have been selling accident victim data to an attorney referral service: WESH in Orlando reports that the FBI is now involved in the case. In related coverage, WFTV reports that “former patients were later solicited by lawyers and funeral homes. In one…
Exploiting Privacy Breaches
Cross-posted from PogoWasRight.org: I recently commented on the rush to class action lawsuits that seems to have become the norm. Today, I was interested to see this column by John Halamka, MD, CIO, CareGroup Health System, Harvard Medical School. He writes, in part: As with any profession there are those attorneys who use the law for personal…
MA: Spectrum says personal, health care info stolen
A local health systems company said a stolen hard drive contains personal and protected health information of some of its clients. According to a statement from Spectrum, no financial information was on the hard drive, and the data was double password protected. However, it was not encrypted because it was being used temporarily, and patient…
Medical identity theft a growing problem
Pamela Lewis Dolan reports: One-third of health care organizations, including physician practices, insurers and pharmacies, have reported catching a patient using the identity of someone else to obtain services, according to a report from the professional services firm PwC. […] Medical identity theft is still a small percentage of the total amount of identity theft…