Reprinted from REPORT ON PATIENT PRIVACY, the industry’s most practical source of news on HIPAA patient privacy provisions. A new gray cloud has arrived on the privacy officer’s skyline and it promises to be as vexing as figuring out the privacy rule was back in 2002: patients who assume the identity of another person in…
Category: Health Data
UK: Laptop with 1,500 patients' details stolen
Brian Lashley reports: A LAPTOP containing confidential patient data has been stolen from a hospital by a burglar who climbed through an unlocked window. The computer holds personal information about 1,581 patients attending a clinic at Stepping Hill Hospital, Hazel Grove, Stockport. Hospital chiefs said the data is protected by a complex password system, which…
Capitol Hill Watch | Kennedy-Enzi EHR Bill Likely To Be Delayed Until After August Recess
Additional action on a bill (S 1693) that would create a national electronic health records system likely will be delayed until after Congress’ August recess, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee ranking member Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) said on Thursday, CongressDaily reports. Enzi introduced the bill in 2007 with committee Chair Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). According…
UK: Stolen medical van contained patient information
A health service van carrying sensitive information has been stolen from a Kent surgery. The driver of the vehicle walked into the surgery in Cheriton Road, Folkestone, and when he returned to unload the van it was gone. Vans run between William Harvey Hospital in Ashford and local GP surgeries twice daily transporting patient samples…
FL: Patient Files Found in Folkston Trash at a Closed Physicians' Office Yields a Box of Abandoned Medical Records
Gordon Jackson reports: FOLKSTON – Residents combing through trash left at a closed physicians’ office under renovation found a box of medical records this week. […] The records were apparently left in the office when physicians closed their practices there several years ago. The unidentified woman who discovered the records turned them over to…
OH: Judge Grants Medical Privacy Injunction
A federal judge in Ohio has granted a preliminary injunction against the city of Columbus, in response to a request from two dispatchers who claim that the police department’s sick leave practices violate several privacy laws and the Constitution. Dispatchers Carrie Best and Cheri Bowman say that the department’s paperwork procedures for absence-without-leave and sick…