From the Information Commissioner’s Office, this enforcement notice: North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust has been ordered by the ICO to review its data protection policy after a file containing sensitive patient information was found at a bus stop. It was one of a number of incidents over the last year which resulted in data being…
Category: Health Data
Ca: Pharmacy reused prescription bottles, left old Rx labels under new ones
CTV reports: A Toronto woman says she peeled back the labels on her medication bottles and found other people’s prescriptions behind them. Sarah Attwell says she noticed the labels were very thick after picking up her five prescriptions from a local Shoppers Drug Mart. “When I investigated and pulled the labels off, I noticed they’re…
Walgreens privacy breach puts info in hands of scary drug addict, suit claims
Aimee Green reports: A man is suing the nation’s largest drug-store chain for $10,000 — claiming that staff at a Gresham Walgreens pharmacy inadvertently shared a copy of his oxycodone prescription with a drug addict, who then tracked him down and demanded that he hand over his pills. The lawsuit details a frightening face-to-face encounter outside…
Indiana State Medical Association discloses theft of backup drives with 39,090 members’ health insurance information
A statement from ISMA: The Indiana State Medical Association (ISMA) experienced the theft of two archive backup hard drives on Feb. 13, 2015. The equipment stored the ISMA group health and life insurance databases, which contained information on 39,090 insureds. This was a random criminal act that occurred while an ISMA employee was transporting the…
Valley Community Healthcare notifies patients after laptop with their information was stolen
Valley Community Healthcare in California is notifying some patients who underwent cardiogram testing. In a letter dated March 9, Paul Wilson, President/CEO and Roger A. Meeks, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, informed patients: On February 24, 2015 we discovered that a laptop computer attached to the Electrocardiogram (EKG) machine in the General Medicine department was missing. The…
Sonoma County social worker sued for snooping in applicant’s files
Sometimes employees snoop in healthcare or government databases just out of curiosity. Other times, they snoop to obtain information to misuse. That misuse could involve financial fraud such as tax refund fraud, or it could involve tormenting your neighbor, according to a lawsuit in Santa Rosa, California. Paul Payne of the Press Democrat reported on a case…