Category: Health Data

Forty-four businesses and organizations have signed a letter to Congress asking that legislation to mandate electronic prescribing for the Medicare program be approved. The letter was sent May 1 to leaders of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways & Means and Energy & Commerce committees. “We urge you to actively support passage of…

Tony Collins reports in ComputerWeekly.com: The first NHS trusts to upload medical details to a national database as part of the £12.4bn National Programme for IT (NPfIT) were pressured for political reasons to push ahead quickly despite the immaturity of the technology, an independent report is set to reveal. A year-long study of the summary…

Amy Harmon reports in the New York Times: A bill that would prohibit discrimination by health insurers and employers based on the information that people carry in their genes won final approval in Congress on Thursday by an overwhelming vote. Full stoy – NY Times

Lori Coolican reports in The StarPhoenix: As he walked past the Mall at Lawson Heights on his way to work Wednesday, Garnet Nicholson noticed an envelope on the ground by a garbage can outside the entrance to a department store. Something about it struck him as odd, so he went over and looked inside. He…

Liz Austin Peterson reports in the Houston Chronicle: The Harris County Hospital District and the Texas Attorney General’s Office have agreed to settle a lawsuit over the privacy of medical records for a Houston jail inmate who died while hog-tied in a padded cell, a hospital district spokesman said this week. The hospital district sued…

A security breach was reported at Roger Williams Medical Center. Hospital officials said Dr. Satori Iwamoto, a skin cancer specialist, had a digital camera stolen from an outpatient area. The pictures of at least three cancer patients in various stages of treatment were on the camera. Each picture had the patient’s name on it. A…