Here’s today’s reminder of the insider threat. It’s a shame they don’t explain how the employee was able to access the patient’s information or why it was accessed. From the U.S.A.O. of the Western District of Michigan: GRAND RAPIDS – U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten today announced that Jessica Nicole Pitcher,…
Category: Health Data
HHS OCR Imposes a $548,265 Penalty Against Children’s Hospital Colorado for HIPAA Violations
Not all monetary penalties are for breaches affecting large numbers of patients. In this case, HHS imposed a penalty on an entity that had breaches in both 2017 and 2020. DataBreaches notes that the 2017 incident affected 3,370 patients, and the 2020 incident affected 2,553 patients — as reported to HHS at the time. Today,…
Change Healthcare Data Breach Settlement Talks To Be Explored Early in MDL
Irvin Jackson reports: Parties involved in the federal Change Healthcare data breach lawsuits have been ordered to meet separately with a U.S. Magistrate Judge over the next two months, to discuss the most effective structure for settlement talks and the optimum timing for when negotiations should begin that may provide payouts to millions of Americans. The potential…
HHS Office for Civil Rights Imposes a $1.19 Million Penalty Against Gulf Coast Pain Consultants for HIPAA Security Rule Violations
In April 2019, DataBreaches reported that Gulf Coast Pain Consultants, LLC d/b/a Clearway Pain Solutions Institute had recently notified patients after discovering on February 20 that their EMR system had been accessed by a third party without authorization. At the time, they disclosed that 35,000 patients had been affected but they did not indicate that…
Bolton Walk-In Clinic in Ontario: lock down your backup already!
DataBreaches hates reporting on an incident when the entity has not yet secured misconfigured storage, but after four months of futile efforts to get a Canadian clinic to respond to responsible disclosures, maybe publication will help get them off the dime. Bolton Walk-In Clinic in Ontario has a data protection policy that says: We are…
Administrative fine of €330,000 issued to Polish medical company after a hacking incident
Background information Date of final decision: 20 May 2024 National case Legal Reference (s): Article 5 (Principles relating to processing of personal data), Article 24 (Responsibility of the controller), Article 32 (Security of processing) Decision: Administrative fine, Compliance order Key words: Accountability, Administrative fine, Data subject rights, Hacker attack, National identification number, Responsibility of the controller…