On September 23rd, CIGNA HealthCare informed the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that it had been notified by law enforcement that an individual had stolen some residents’ personal information and used it to file fraudulent tax returns in another state. The individual, who was arrested and charged, is the brother of a former CIGNA employee who…
Category: Health Data
Sentara E-R dept. worker among 3 facing federal ID theft charges
An employee at Sentara Port Warwick emergency department is among those indicted on federal charges including ID theft and fraud. According to the indictment, Miracle Howard, an ER patient intake representative, stole driver’s license and credit card information from patients and others and gave it to Latresa Totten and Warnette Morris. […] The indictment…
Working Together on Health Information Privacy
Remarks at the Sixth Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust Address by Elizabeth Denham, Assistant Privacy Commissioner Fredericton, New Brunswick October 20, 2008 We want to find ways to let EHR technology achieve its promise while at the same time protecting this pivotal right we call privacy. We are acutely aware of the many…
Identity Crisis: An Examination of the Costs and Benefits of a Unique Patient Identifier for the U.S. Health Care System
By: Richard Hillestad, James H. Bigelow, Basit Chaudhry, Paul Dreyer, Michael D. Greenberg, Robin C. Meili, M. Susan Ridgely, Jeff Rothenberg, Roger Taylor A national health information network, or NHIN, that enables disparate health care information systems across the United States to allow authorized users to easily and quickly share critical health information has the…
Taking a Peek at the Experts’ Genetic Secrets
Amy Harmon reports: Is Esther Dyson, the technology venture capitalist who is training to be an astronaut, genetically predisposed to a major heart attack? Does Steven Pinker, the prominent psychologist and author, have a gene variant that raises his risk of Alzheimer’s, which his grandmother suffered from, to greater than 50 percent? Did Misha Angrist,…
Atlanta Police sued for violation of privacy
Tim Eberly reports: A man who tried to become an Atlanta police officer in 2006 is suing the department, claiming it secretly had him tested for HIV and would not hire him after learning that he was HIV-positive. The man, who filed the lawsuit in federal court under the pseudonym Richard Roe, is accusing Atlanta…