Michael Biesecker of AP reports: North Carolina health officials said Friday that they had inadvertently disclosed the personal information of tens of thousands of children receiving Medicaid coverage, but were tight-lipped about precisely what caused the massive privacy breach. The state Department of Health and Human Services issued a written release saying that new Medicaid…
Category: Health Data
University of Pennsylvania Health System says approximately 1,000 patients' privacy was compromised by printing error at RevSpring
Marie McCullogh reports that a printing error by vendor RevSpring, exposed approximately 500 University of Pennsylvania Health System patients’ names, type of services and tests, and amount owed to other patients: One of Penn’s billing vendors, RevSpring of Wixom, Mich., had a malfunction in its printing operation. As a result, some patients received bills containing both…
Lawsuit against Omnicell dismissed
I’ve blogged about the Omnicell breach of November 2012 a number of times on this blog as new information emerged about who was affected by the breach. As a quick reminder, a laptop with unencrypted PHI was stolen from an employee’s car. Omnicell is a business associate of numerous hospitals, providing them with medication dispensing/pharmacy…
In which I remind HHS of Einstein's point…
In a HealthcareITNews article on a recent breach, Erin McCann included this eye-catching statement: Out of the more than 80,000 HIPAA breach cases OCR has received since 2003, only 17 of them have resulted in fines thus far. To paraphrase Einstein, HHS might do well to remember that if they keep doing what they’ve always done,…
Accretive Health Settles FTC Charges That It Failed to Adequately Protect Consumers’ Personal Information
From the FTC, a follow-up on a breach that was first disclosed in September 2011, and that I’ve covered a number of times on PHIprivacy.net (see these articles). Regular readers may recall that Accretive was also sued by Minnesota’s Attorney General. That suit settled for $2.5 million in July 2012. Accretive Health, Inc., a company that…
Riverside Health System notifies 919 patients after employee improperly accessed their information
I hope this is the last breach of PHI I’ll have to report in 2013, but since there’s still 5 hours to go, who knows? WAVY in Newport News, Virginia reports: A local hospital is offering free credit monitoring after officials say an employee inappropriately accessed patients’ medical records. According to Peter Glagola, Director of…