Category: Health Data

Jordan Rau and Patrick McGreevy report: Hospitals and other health facilities will face harsh new penalties if their employees snoop in the medical records of patients, under legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger after privacy was breached on celebrities’ files — including his wife’s — at UCLA Medical Center. Schwarzenegger approved two bills creating…

Jaquetta White reports: The names, addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates and Social Security numbers of more than 1,700 independent agents for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana were accidentally included in an e-mail sent to the insurer’s agents last week. An e-mail about plans to update an internal operating system contained a spreadsheet attachment…

Steve Nowottny reports: EXCLUSIVE: Four NHS trusts in five have lost patient data or suffered a data security breach since the beginning of last year, Pulse can reveal. Our investigation reveals the true scale of confidentiality breaches within the NHS, with trusts reporting more than 1,300 incidents since January 2007. […] Figures obtained the Freedom…

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today charged Treatment Associates of Victoria Inc., with violating the Texas Identity Theft Enforcement and Protection Act. According to court documents, the San Antonio-based drug testing and rehabilitation facility violated a state law that requires businesses to protect their customers’ sensitive information. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) launched…

Matt Wilkinson reports: An investigation has been launched into how a file loaded with confidential information on vulnerable mental health patients was picked up by a shopper in Oxford. A member of the public found the folder — lost by Bromford Housing Group — at Templars Square shopping centre in Cowley. The folder contained personal…

ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS reports: At hospitals, as at Tiffany’s, ruby-colored bracelets are far preferable to amethyst. New York’s 11 public hospitals are at the forefront of a national movement to standardize color coding of hospital wristbands to designate patient conditions, in which purple — the color of amethyst — means “Do Not Resuscitate.” Red, or ruby,…