As an update to the story reported here, Bill Hendrick of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution provides additional details: Private records of up to 71,000 Georgia families who are members of health insurance programs for the poor or working poor were accidentally made available on the Internet for several days, and some of the data may have…
Category: Health Data
California Hospital Faces Sanctions After Workers Wrongly Looked at Patient Records
Jennifer Steinhauer reports in The New York Times: The head of California’s health department said Monday that the agency planned to sanction the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center after hospital workers improperly viewed the records of more than 60 patients, including the actress Farrah Fawcett and the state’s first lady, Maria Shriver. The…
WellCare Health Plans discloses data difficulties
WellCare Health Plans Inc. has blamed human error for the disclosure on the Internet of some data for its Medicaid members in Georgia.The data included personal identifying information for some members of Georgia Families, WellCare said in a release. The files included information such as members’ names, birth dates, dates of eligibility, member ID numbers…
New Player in Personal DNA Profiling Emphasizes Privacy
Jacob Goldstein writes in The Wall Street Journal Health Blog: Another company is jumping into the growing world of direct-to-consumer DNA testing today. For $2,500, Navigenics will tell you your genetic risk for 18 different diseases — at least according to the best available genetic studies. Another $250 a year gets you an ongoing subscription…
Gaps In Hospital Security Policies Put Patient Data At Risk
From Kroll’s press release: Best practices in data security cannot be achieved by employee training alone. Organizations must make data security a part of their DNA, reflected in every aspect of business operations. The healthcare industry’s focus on medical privacy and compliance has fostered a lack of awareness around the frequency, cause and seriousness of…
Your medical history is a click away
Katie Foutz has an article in the Naperville Sun that starts out by describing how helpful it can be to have electronic health records: […] While victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita relocated to places around the country, they couldn’t always remember the names or dosages of the medications their Gulf Coast doctors had prescribed….