Michael Bertoncini writes: Health insurance carriers often provide explanation of benefits (EOB) summaries to the policyholder specifying the type and cost of health care services received by dependents covered by the policy. EOBs often disclose sensitive information regarding the mental or physical health condition of adult dependents. Massachusetts has now enacted a law, an act…
Category: Health Data
States Increase HIPAA Enforcement
Elliot Golding and Jennifer Tharp of Squire Patton Boggs write: Overview of Recent Settlement Actions Recent Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) enforcement settlements for Virtual Medical Group (“VMG”) in New Jersey and EmblemHealth in New York may signal a broader trend of increased state HIPAA enforcement. Under the Health Information Technology for Economic…
Fasthealth Security incident continues to leak out and confuse the public
The FastHealth breach is confusing the heck out of patients and employees. I’m getting inquiries from folks who are understandably suspicious because they never heard of the firm or can’t figure out how their details got caught up in this all. Others see news reports and realize that an entity has no connection to them,…
UnityPoint Health notifying patients of phishing attack
On February 15, 2018, UnityPoint Health discovered our email system was the victim of a phishing attack that compromised some employee email accounts. UnityPoint Health promptly took action to secure the impacted email accounts, changed passwords, and engaged external cybersecurity professionals to analyze what information might have been contained in the impacted accounts. After a…
La: Former medical assistant, 7 others jailed in connection with prescription fraud
Littice Bacon-Blood reports: A former medical assistant at a children’s clinic and seven others have been arrested and jailed in connection with a fraudulent prescription drug ring for opiate-based medication, authorities in St. John the Baptist Parish announced Friday (April 13). Authorities at the St. John Sheriff’s Office accuse the medical assistant, identified by authorities as…
Blue Shield of California notifies members of privacy breach
As submitted to the California Attorney General’s Office: On March 23, 2018, the Blue Shield of California (Blue Shield) Privacy Office received confirmation that your Protected Health Information had been shared with an insurance broker who was not authorized to receive it. The disclosure occurred in November 2017, during the 2018 Medicare Annual Enrollment Period,…