Jeff Hansel reports that the Mayo Clinic has fired an employee for snooping into medical and financial records over a period of four years: The employee worked in the Mayo financial business unit in Arizona and once worked in Rochester. An estimated 1,700 patient records were accessed, said Mayo spokesman Chris Gade, noting the employee…
Category: Health Data
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Appeals CDPH Fine (updated)
For Release: September 09, 2010 PALO ALTO, Calif. — Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford is appealing a California Department of Public Health (CDPH) penalty. The CDPH on April 23, 2010, after the self-reporting of a security incident by Packard Children’s, alerted the hospital that a fine of $250,000 was being levied as a result…
South Shore Hospital won't provide individual notice. Do they have to?
Joseph Goedert has an interesting article on Health Data Management about the South Shore Hospital breach, focusing on whether South Shore Hospital is required, under HITECH, to notify individuals by postal mail or if they can use the “substitute notice” provisions under Massachusetts law. Goedert writes, in part: According to a new statement on…
California State Agency Released Confidential HIV Information: ACLU and Lambda Legal Demand Explanation
Today Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC), and HIV & AIDS Legal Services Alliance (HALSA) sent a letter to David Maxwell-Jolly, Director of the California Department of Health Care Services, demanding a full explanation for the unauthorized and illegal disclosures of confidential identifying information of approximately 5,000 HIV-positive Medi-Cal recipients….
California hospital fined $250k for tardy breach notice to state (updated)
If you’re supposed to report a breach to the state of California, you’d darn well better report it in a timely fashion. HealthLeaders Media reports that Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University has been fined $250,000 by the California Department of Public Health for failing to report a patient records breach <del>by April 23</del>. The…
Fi: Data protection breached most often by nosy co-workers
The other day I posted something about data protection of healthcare records in Finland. That report indicated that breaches in the private healthcare sector were more common than in the public healthcare sector. Today’s Helsinki Times discusses the Ombudsman’s report and sheds some additional light on the nature and extent of breaches there: “Disputes in…