Nick Dole reports on the lack of transparency and notification following breaches of health data in NSW: NSW hospital patients have had their confidential details compromised on multiple occasions, including medical records being found in a public carpark. Many of the most serious privacy breaches have been reported in the Central Coast Local Health District,…
Category: Health Data
No, you can’t defend your reputation if it means revealing PHI without the patient’s consent
Here we go again, it seems. No matter how irate you may be a patient’s bad review and no matter how unfair you think it may be, no, you cannot just reveal their protected health information without their consent – even if they revealed some of it themselves. Patrick Danner reports: A San Antonio doctor…
TX: Email gaffe revealed 1,417 cancer patients’ email addresses
Cindy George reports: A “carbon copy” email sent last week from the Houston Methodist Cancer Center to patients showed the addresses of all recipients, potentially revealing their identities to the public and their association with the treatment facility. Patients were alerted about the issue by Houston Methodist in a letter dated March 16 and sent…
Lane Community College notifies health clinic patients of potential breach
Dylan Darling reports: A virus-infected computer at the Lane Community College health clinic may have relayed patient information — names, addresses, Social Security numbers and more — to an unknown third party for more than a year, the college said Friday. LCC said it has sent letters warning 2,500 patients whose information may have been…
Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario employee breached privacy of nearly 300 patients
Shaamini Yogaretnam reports: A former part-time instructor at Algonquin College and CHEO employee shared the private information of 283 patients with students, prompting the end of their employment at the college and a privacy investigation at the hospital, the Citizen has learned. On March 10, Adam Vaughan received a concerning letter in the mail about…
UK: 26 million NHS patients’ records in security scare over SystmOne “enhanced data sharing”
Did no one really understand what “enhanced data sharing” would permit until now? Laura Donnelly reports: The medical records of 26 million patients are embroiled in a major security breach amid warnings that the IT system used by thousands of GPs is not secure. The Information Commissioner is investigating concerns that records held by 2,700 practices…