Duke Helfand reports: An applicant for Anthem Blue Cross insurance has sued the giant insurer over allegations that it failed to protect his confidential information from computer hackers who gained access to the company’s internal records earlier this year. The lawsuit, filed by Patrick Magorien of Sacramento, stems from a security breach involving attorneys who…
Category: Health Data
When your database of all staff is on a flash drive that goes missing…
On boy…. On September 9, Cooper University Hospital in New Jersey notified the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office that a flash drive with a database of employees’ personal information was discovered missing on July 8, less than 24 hours after the database had been copied to the drive. The drive went missing from the Graduate…
Janitor at L.A. County health clinic allegedly stole files for recycling money
Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports: A janitor at the Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center in Willowbrook has been charged with felony commercial burglary for allegedly selling 14 boxes of patient records to a recycling center, authorities said Thursday. The boxes contained computer printouts of about 30,000 patient names, addresses, phone numbers and medical record…
HOW many patient privacy breaches per month?
As regular readers know, I tend to avoid blogging about commercial products and am leery about reporting results from studies that might be self-serving, but a new paper from FairWarning has some data that I think are worth mentioning here. In their report, they provide some baseline data on how many patient privacy breaches…
August VA report reveals no smoking guns
The Department of Veterans Affairs has posted its Monthly Report to Congress on Data Incidents for August 2010. As in the past, there are a number of mis-mailed prescriptions or incidents involving one patient being sent another patient’s medication. Most incidents during this period were of low to moderate risk to patients, and…
The NHS IT worker who snooped on hundreds of patients' records
AN IT manager for the NHS in Yorkshire has been warned he faces jail after admitting illegally spying on medical records of patients. Dale Trever, 22, was working for a primary care trust as a data quality manager when he accessed patient records – all for women and mostly for his family, friends and colleagues….