It seems there was a near-miss at a VA hospital in Maine last month. But an alert housekeeping employee noticed that patient records had been thrown in a dumpster, notified the right person, and everything was recovered with no public exposure. Mistakes happen. Creating a culture where all employees know about privacy protection and what…
Category: Health Data
Hospital worker at Massachusetts Eye and Ear charged with ID theft
Jack Encarnacao reports: Police say a Quincy woman who worked at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and her brother used stolen patient information to open fake National Grid accounts that allowed them to dodge paying for electricity. Fallon and Emmanuel Delacruz of 270 Quarry St. have been charged with identity theft and larceny. Fallon…
UnitedHealthcare employee stole personal and Medicare information
From LocalNews8: UnitedHealthcare said some Idaho customers enrolled in its Medicare plans may have had their identities stolen. “On Jan. 30, 2012, the company discovered that a former employee, during the course of his employment, may have accessed information in a database in a way that was inconsistent with his job duties,” the company said…
LA: Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center laptop missing; held data on over 17,000 ICU patients
Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge issued this statement today: Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center has determined that a laptop computer containing limited health information for former Intensive Care Unit patients was discovered to be missing from a local physician office sometime between March 16 and 20,…
PA: Patient information breach confirmed
Dan Kelly and Ron Devlin report: Reading Hospital’s medical records system was breached recently by an employee who copied sensitive patient information and used it for training purposes, hospital officials confirmed Thursday. Medical test results, diagnoses, prescribed medications and other data legally classified as Protected Health Information on 12 patients was made public without the…
Mich. HIV contractor violated privacy policy, investigation finds
A government contractor in Michigan violated the state’s data security policies in its handling of thousands of pages of information relating to people living with HIV, a state investigation has found. The investigation concluded, however, that no state or federal laws were broken and that no individually identifiable private health information was disclosed to the…