Dom Nicastro reports: Covered entities and business associates reporting breaches of unsecured personal health information (PHI) affecting 500 or more individuals to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) together could spend nearly $1 billion because of those breaches. According to a report from the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST), 108 entities submitting the breach reports…
Category: Health Data
Loma Linda offers help after desktops stolen in June
Darrell R. Santschi reports: Loma Linda University’s dental school has hired a credit monitoring and repair firm to help potential identity theft victims. Kroll Inc. will offer assistance to any of the 10,100 patients whose personal information was contained in three desktop computers stolen from the school the weekend of June 12, university spokesman Dustin…
MA: Patients’ files from at least four hospitals left at public dump
Liz Kowalczyk reports that four Massachusetts community hospitals – Milford, Holyoke, Carney, and Milton – are investigating how tens of thousands of patient health records, some containing Social Security numbers and sensitive medical diagnoses, ended up in a pile described as 20 feet long by 20 feet wide at Georgetown Transfer Station. Read more of…
Ca: Medical records left behind
Brendan Wedley reports: More than 25,000 medical records containing personal information and about 70 computer hard drives were left behind at the former St. Joseph’s hospital when Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) sold the site in October last year, the hospital revealed on Thursday. The records are what hospital officials call working documents, not patient…
DVD with Walsh Pharmacy patient data disappears during mailing
When McKesson Pharmacy Systems mailed Massachusetts-based Walsh Pharmacy a DVD containing information on Walsh Pharmacy patients, the envelope arrived but the DVD was missing. Through its attorney, Walsh Pharmacy notified the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office of the incident involving its business associate systems vendor. Information on the DVD included pharmacy patients’ names, and in…
VA Data Breaches Go Live
Bob Brewin alerts us to another new resource on data breaches: Today the Veterans Affairs Department started posting online its monthly data breach reports as part of its ongoing transparency thing, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker told a press briefing this morning. He said the latest report (for July) might not make it to…