Over on the EMR and HIPAA blog, John says he’s torn about the case where a young man has been charged for his somewhat poorly thought out approach to a job interview with Houston Healthcare: … Honestly, Robert Rhodes, chief information officer for Houston Healthcare, just sounds like an angry CIO whose security efforts were torn…
Category: Health Data
CT: Unions Say Hartford Hospital Violated Privacy Rights
Matthew Sturdevant reports: The unions for state employees say Hartford Hospital violated the privacy rights of union members when it wrote letters to them regarding bitter negotiations with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the state’s largest health insurer. The hospital wrote to patients “in an effort to use them for leverage in contentious negotiations,”…
AZ: 128 Valley patients have medical identity stolen
Jennifer Parks reports: … Department of Insurance investigators say an Armenian mob ring somehow stole 128 different patients’ records from the Minor family clinic in Phoenix and then started operating an insurance fraud scheme out of vacant office buildings. Investigators say 23-year-old Gevorg Melkonyan of Glendale, Calif. and 44-year old Elina Arutyunova of Phoenix set up…
Missing hard drive from WTC Medical Monitoring Program at Mt. Sinai contained PHI
A missing – and most likely stolen – hard drive from the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at Mt. Sinai Hospital contained e-mails with some some protected health information. The drive was taken from a computer in the Mental Health Center. According to a notification letter (Page 1 Page 2) sent to those…
OH: Miami Valley Hospital employees breached crash victim’s privacy
Ben Sutherly reports: A Mason man seriously injured in a sensational crash on Interstate 675 that drew national attention received a certified letter Tuesday from Miami Valley Hospital notifying him that four hospital employees had inappropriately accessed his medical records. In a letter dated Oct. 20, hospital Privacy Officer Cindy Howley wrote that employees had…
Should HHS fine entities who experience repeated avoidable security failures?
I’m working on a breach post for later today but started mulling over the question of whether HHS needs to start fining covered entities who have repeat breaches where the entity did not seem to adequately harden their security after the first breach or to really learn from experience. This is 2010. The excuse “we…