An update to HHS’s breach tool this week adds 16 more incidents to their counter, although two of the entries appear to be for the same incident. Significantly, the list includes yet another Florida hospital report of theft of patient data, presumably for tax refund fraud or other fraud. In this case, though, it was not…
Category: Health Data
Eastern Health Authority Discloses Two Breaches Involving Briefcases Stolen from Employees' Cars
Eastern Health advised today that it has experienced an accidental breach of privacy of 63 of its clients. The accidental breach occurred when the briefcase of an employee was stolen from a vehicle while left unattended for approximately 10 minutes on the evening of April 17, 2013. The briefcase contained one client chart and a…
Westcoast Children's Clinic notifies parents after sensitive info faxed to wrong number
Westcoast Children’s Clinic in Oakland recently notified the parents of a patient after a psychological assessment report containing the patient’s name, date of birth, current placement history, developmental and psychological treatment history, limited family history, educational history, current psychological concerns, testing data, results and interpretation, and treatment recommendations was faxed to an unintended recipient. The…
Macon, Georgia Macon woman pleads guilty to stealing blood plasma donors’ identity information for tax fraud scheme
Amy Leigh Womack reports that Bridgette Williams of Macon, Georgia pleaded guilty last week in federal court to charges she stole identities of blood plasma donors while employed at BioMat USA. Womack and her co-conspirators submitted fraudulent tax returns to the tune of $191,000. According to The Telegraph, she stole more than 130 patients’ identities…
What healthcare CIOs need to know from Verizon data breach report
Don Fluckinger reports: The good news: While the annual Verizon-Secret Service 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report shows that hacktivist attacks and state-sponsored espionage are on the rise, overall, healthcare organizations aren’t really prime targets for those kinds of attacks. […] The bad news: The industry has a variety of data breach prevention worries. Healthcare providers have a lot of…
Kmart says some confidential customer information stolen during robbery of Little Rock store
Associated Press reports: Kmart says some customer information may have been compromised during an armed robbery of its store in Little Rock last month. Kmart said Monday that it’s notifying pharmacy customers about the March 17 robbery. The company says the gunman took “electronic media” that backed up the pharmacy’s computer system. Kmart says the…