Five councils breached the Data Protection Act by failing to keep people’s personal information secure, Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, said today: Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council breached the Data Protection Act on four separate occasions during a two month period last year. The breaches included an incident in May when an individual was mistakenly sent…
Category: Health Data
A glimpse inside the $234 billion world of medical ID theft
Rick Kam, President and CEO, ID Experts and Christine Arevalo, director of healthcare identity management, ID Experts write: Healthcare fraud is costing American taxpayers up to $234 billion annually, based on estimates from the FBI. It’s no wonder that a stolen medical identity has a $50 street value, according to the World Privacy Forum –…
UK: Children’s centre loses sensitive family details
From This is North Devon: Sensitive personal data on a number of vulnerable families who use a specialist children’s centre in North Devon has been stolen. The confidential information on 45 families was on a USB computer data stick. It was lost when a member of staff at the Victoria House Children’s Centre in Barnstaple,…
MA: Hospital investigating how patient papers got lost
John Zaremba reports: St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center is scrambling to figure out how files containing patient information wound up on the ground outside a Charlestown office complex, miles from the hospital’s Brighton campus. An employee of Roadrunner Moving and Storage found the paperwork Friday outside the company’s Terminal Drive offices, near the landmark Schrafft center,…
Ca: Medical records breach was an employee error
Here’s a follow-up to a breach previously mentioned on this blog. Tyler Olsen reports: A Fraser Health spokesperson says an investigation into the discovery of private medical records on a local street concluded that Chilliwack General Hospital’s privacy policies are adequate and that the breach was caused by a single employee. In late September, a…
Newly revealed incidents from HHS's breach tool
HHS recently updated its breach notification tool and added seven incidents that have not been previously reported on this blog. In the first incident, Robert S. Smith, M.D., Inc. of Georgia notified HHS that a laptop theft on October 17, 2011 affected 17,000 patients. In researching this incident, I found a breach notification: HIPAA Breach…