Dan Walker reports: A flash drive containing the personal information of thousands of City of Milwaukee workers was stolen along with the car of an employee of a health care firm that contracts with the city. The employee worked for Dynacare Laboratories, a contractor used by Froedtert Health Workforce Health in connection with the city’s…
Category: Health Data
And yet 9 more breaches added to HHS's breach tool (Update2)
HHS added 9 more breach reports to its public breach tool yesterday. Here’s a recap of the ones we already knew about: The UnityPoint Health breach was added to the list, although the third party company that provided the employee to UnityPoint was not disclosed in their report. In a statement sent to PHIprivacy.net today,…
Everywhere I look/listen, there's a HIPAA breach
Maybe I should start a column just about the “small” HIPAA breaches I seem to trip over on a too-frequent basis. Today’s entry occurred in the waiting area of an outpatient endoscopy/colonoscopy service. I was sitting and chatting with another woman as we waited for our respective spouses. Out came a doctor, who walked up…
PA: Local Doctor Sues After Electronic Billing Co. Loses Data (Updated)
Marty Griffin reports: Dr. Bhola Roy is a board certified internist. These days he spends hour after hour on his computer, ordered by Medicare to file all of his records electronically. “Medicare is mandating to us, we have to use electronic health records,” he said. That mandate went horribly wrong, when in a lawsuit, Dr….
Deal reached over doc's privacy breach
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, Joelle Dally reports on a case similar in some respects to cases I’ve recently mentioned on this blog involving Northern Inyo Hospital and the Guthrie clinic: The Canterbury District Health Board appears to have reached a deal to avoid legal action over a doctor’s 2007 privacy breach. The case could have…
Follow-up: Can a clinic be held liable for employee's bad acts?
And speaking of how much a health care facility can do about a rogue employee and whether they are responsible or liable, there is an update to a case I first noted here in 2011 involving a Guthrie Healthcare System clinic in Corning, New York. In that case, a nurse willfully disclosed a patient’s information on…