Adam Vaccaro reports: Buying medical marijuana in Massachusetts got a little less anonymous Thursday morning, when the state’s lone pot dispensary accidentally shared some of its patients’ email addresses with other patients. State health officials are investigating. Salem’s Alternative Therapies Group sent an email addressed “Dear Patient,” to 157 email addresses. A copy of the…
Category: Health Data
Lawrence General Hospital notifies patients after thumb drive discovered missing
Lawrence General Hospital in Massachusetts has sent notification letters to 2,071 patients after a thumb drive with patient information was lost. The notification was made August 7, almost two months after the hospital discovered that the drive was missing from a secured hospital laboratory. The drive had been last seen on June 6, and was discovered missing…
Woman accused of stealing identities of coworkers, going shopping
Kate Jacobson reports that Elexes Thaddies, 24, was arrested and charged with stealing co-workers’ information to pay her bills and to go shopping with. There are at least 20 victims – most of whom were employees at Bethesda Hospital in Boynton Beach, where Thaddies worked. Read more on Sun Sentinel.
UT: Medical documents containing personal info found filling dumpster in Taylorsville
Matt McDonald reports that “piles and piles of medical records, court documents and other personal files” were found in an open dumpster in Taylorsville, Utah yesterday morning. The documents were found by a dentist, who called the police. As we’ve heard too many times, police investigated but determined that it would be difficult to pursue any…
Former Fort Benning Hospital employee sentenced for role in tax refund fraud scheme.
There’s a follow-up to a case that I’ve been covering since February, 2014, when Tracy Mitchell, a former Fort Benning Hospital employee, was indicted for stealing service members’ identity information to use for a tax refund fraud scheme. A superseding indictment was subsequently filed in May, 2014. Mitchell pled guilty in April of this year. She was…
Advanced Data Processing/Intermedix sued over 2012 insider breach
Remember the Advanced Data Processing/Intermedix insider breach of 2012 where a rogue employee provided ambulance patient identity information to others involved in a tax refund fraud scheme? I had covered it on PHIprivacy.net (cf here and here for just two of the posts) and also on this site (cf, this post). In reporting on the breach, one of the…