From ABC Eyewitness News: The personal information of thousands of patients at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center may have been compromised. A Federal investigation and a NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital internal audit have uncovered the possible theft of personal identity information, including names, phone numbers, and in some cases social security numbers, of approximately 40,000 hospital patients….
Category: Health Data
Snooping in records has a history at UCLA
Charles Ornstein of the Los Angeles Times reports: Though UCLA Medical Center has portrayed recent privacy breaches as the rare actions of rogue employees, the hospital has known since at least 1995 that staffers were peeking into the medical records of such prominent patients as Tom Cruise and Mariah Carey — and even spying on…
Four Charged In ID Theft Scheme
The following AP story is a follow-up to a story they reported last month: A former Rhode Island Hospital security guard and three former RadioShack workers have been charged in a scheme to steal the identity of hospital patients. A federal grand jury indictment filed Wednesday alleges Michael Bermudez obtained patients’ names, dates of birth…
The Man Who Lost His Name and His Genetic Identity
For privacy advocates, the name “Eric Drew” immediately evokes a few images: a man expected to die of leukemia, a sleazy lab tech stealing his details and using it for ID theft, and Drew doing battle — against the leukemia, against the ID thief, and then against credit reporting agencies who refused to clear his…
Personal information swiped from Norfolk case worker's car
From WVEC.com: The personal information of about 30 clients of Norfolk’s Community Services Board was compromised when a case worker’s briefcase was stolen. Officials say the briefcase was left in the worker’s car in a Virginia Beach parking garage on March 24, but someone smashed a window and stole it. The case worker violated the…
Effectiveness of medical privacy law is questioned
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar writes in the Los Angeles Times: When Congress passed a federal medical privacy law more than a decade ago, it was hailed as a new level of protection for patients nationwide. But even though the government has received about 34,000 complaints of privacy violations since it officially began enforcing the law five years…