Maryland-based HomeCall Inc. recently notified the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that an employee’s portable point-of-care device was stolen. The device contained names, addresses, SSN, medical record number, diagnoses, and treatment information. HomeCall reports that the device was “multi-level password protected” (but not encrypted). In correspondence to those affected, HomeCall stated that the device…
Category: Health Data
Laptops with PHI do not belong in unattended vehicles, Tuesday edition
On May 10, Baltimore-based Alliance Inc. notified the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that a laptop stolen from an employee’s car on May 3 contained client information in password-protected files. Alliance is a not-for-profit that services clients with disabilities and mental health needs. Most of the affected clients are transients who either drop in or who are…
Personal details on a toilet wall
I’ve blogged a few times about whether the dead have any privacy rights and whether their families have any rights. To those who still believe that the dead have no privacy nor need any, I would remind them to think of the pain privacy violations can cause the surviving family members. As one example,…
University of Oklahoma Neurology Clinic notifies almost 20,000 of security breach
In the process of updating PHIprivacy.net to reflect breaches newly disclosed by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), I found reference to a breach for which I was able to find a companion statement. The University of Oklahoma-Tulsa, Neurology Clinic recently notified HHS of an incident affecting 19,264 patients. According to HHS’s…
Nine more breaches newly revealed on HHS's web site
Thanks to Adam Shostack, I realized that although HHS provides two formats for their breach report database, the two databases do not necessarily contain the same number of breach reports on any given day. While he was analyzing data based on the .xml version containing 181 breach reports, I had been using the .csv version,…
HIPAA Follies, Monday Edition: Tweeting that your sloppy security resulted in data theft
I’ve reported a number of instances where employees have been disciplined or terminated for imprudent postings on Facebook or MySpace, but a series of tweets I saw on Twitter yesterday demonstrate how to simultaneously diminish the public’s confidence in HIPAA while risking your own future, 140 characters at a time. It started with a twitterer…