Associated Press reports: The personal information of 508 Illinois nursing home residents was inside a stolen briefcase, prompting the state agency overseeing Medicaid to notify the people affected by the breach. The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services announced the incident Friday. A statement from the department says the briefcase was stolen Aug. 31…
Category: Health Data
UK: NHS lost 1.8 million patient records in a year
Official statistics showed that at least 1.8 million sensitive papers went missing throughout the health service in just 12 months. Among the breaches included data security records dumped in public bins and electronic records found for sale on an internet auction site. Other security lapses involved details of terminally ill patients being faxed to the…
Kaiser Permanente notifies employees after e-mail error exposes their SSN to unauthorized individual
On October 29, Kaiser Permanente began notifying employees of a breach that occurred August 24th when their names, Social Security numbers, and other information were mistakenly e-mailed to an individual not authorized to receive such information. From their letter: [First Name] [Last Name] [Street Address] [City], [State], [ZIP code] Dear [First Name], We are writing…
WA: Prescription drug tracking system illegally accessed (updated)
From the this-can’t-be-good dept.: This week Washington’s Prescription Monitoring Program sent letters to 34 people whose records were illegally accessed by someone who used a physician’s identity. The doctor’s personal and professional information was used to set up a fraudulent account in the statewide system. […] State health officials immediately deactivated the account when they…
Tax refund fraud linked to health care documents
Elaine Silvestrini reports on yet another case out of Florida where patient data was misused for tax refund fraud: When the Florida Highway Patrol arrested a Tampa man during a traffic stop last year, troopers found evidence of tax refund fraud, including internal corporate documents from a Tampa-based private health insurance company. The documents from…
Leader Of $100 Million Medicare Fraud Scheme Pleads Guilty In Manhattan Federal Court To Racketeering And Other Crimes
Back in October 2010, I noted the case of the Orange Regional Medical Center. They had suffered a data security breach in 2005, but never knew they had been breached until the U.S. Attorney’s Office mentioned their name in the context of a criminal Medicare fraud ring that operated between 2006 and 2010. Many doctors had…