Melissa Lemieux reports: A hacker working under the name Vanda The God claims to have breached the database of Tū Ora Compass Health and has offered the medical details of 1 million New Zealanders for sale on Twitter, according to the Canterbury, New Zealand Star-News. The massive hack has left the Ministry of Health unsure…
Category: Health Data
Ca: Edmonton medical clinic employee fined after admitting to health data breaches
Canadian Press reports: An office assistant has been fined for snooping into two people’s health records while she was an employee at an Edmonton medical clinic. Glenda Garcia admitted in provincial court last week that she looked at the data on numerous occasions without a valid reason. Garcia, who was fined a total of just over $4,000, is no longer…
3 Hospitals in Alabama Forced to Turn Patients Away After Ransomware Attack
Kate Reilly reports: Three hospitals in Alabama remained closed Wednesday “to all but the most critical new patients” due to a ransomware attack that disrupted medical care. “A criminal is limiting our ability to use our computer systems in exchange for an as-yet unknown payment,” the DCH Health System said in a statement on Tuesday. “Our hospitals have implemented…
Dental Practice Pays $10,000 to Settle Social Media Disclosures of Patients’ Protected Health Information
HHS OCR has announced another settlement of a HIPAA complaint: Elite Dental Associates, Dallas (“Elite”) has agreed to pay $10,000 to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and to adopt a corrective action plan to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act…
Ca: Pharmacy patient health files discovered at Rankin landfill
Darrell Greer reports: The North West Company has recently issued a public information release notifying Kivalliq residents that materials containing health information were recovered from the Rankin Inlet landfill site this past Feb. 28. The release went on to state that the information belonged to patients of the previously operating Sakku Drugs in Rankin (since…
IN: Goshen Health notifies patients potentially impacted by 2018 data security breach
Sometimes, an incident that doesn’t appear to require notification may require notification under HIPAA. In an August, 2018 incident reported on The Elkhart Truth that involved Goshen Health, the health system originally determined that no notification was required, but when forensic investigators came in months later and looked for any information that might have been…