Category: Health Data

Jaikumar Vijayan reports: Health care organizations that operate in California have two more good reasons to be sure that they comply with the data security and privacy requirements of the federal HIPAA law. Last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law two pieces of legislation that significantly increase state fines for security and privacy…

Ann Zeigler reports: The FTC plans to issue a new consumer protection rule that will take on the issue of medical identity theft, a growing concern now that identity thieves have recognized that medical records are rich sources of financial information that can be used to obtain credit with someone else’s history. Alternate forms of…

Martha Neil reports: In the latest ruling in a steady stream of medical privacy cases, a California judge has nixed a Texas doctor’s claimed right to distribute videotapes of the 1994 breast augmentation surgery he performed on celebrity Anna Nicole Smith. After granting a preliminary injunction against Dr. Gerald Johnson last year, Los Angeles County…

Scott Macnab reports: Health chiefs failed to remove confidential patient records from a disused hospital despite repeated warnings, an official report yesterday found. NHS Tayside took action only after media reports emerged about the data which had been left lying at Strathmartine Hospital on the outskirts of Dundee. Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon yesterday said the…

CONFIDENTIAL medical letters, documents and payroll information have been stored in an unguarded corridor open to the public at Basildon Hospital. Our reporters were able to stroll into the corridor, off an access road at the back of the hospital, and look through envelopes, including some marked private and confidential. Read more in Echo

Steve Nowottny reports: The Government is planning to make compliance with data security standards a contractual requirement after claiming GPs are the weak link in keeping patient records safe. The plans – which are likely to be resisted by GPC negotiators – come just a week after a Pulse investigation found that four NHS trusts…