Category: Health Data

They probably wished it was an April’s Fool joke, but it wasn’t.  On April 1, United Healthcare learned that their business associate, Medco, had suffered a computer system error that exposed members’ prescription benefit messages on the Medco web site to other members. In a letter dated May 24 to the Maryland Attorney General’s Office,…

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…

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…

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,…

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,…