Micky Tripathi, President and CEO of Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative provides yeoman service by dissecting a security breach they experienced earlier this year. For my money, every entity dealing with patient data should read this piece. If you’ve been through it yourself, you’ll be nodding your heads in empathy, and if you haven’t, well, it may…
Category: Health Data
UK: Powys County Council fined £130,000 for disclosing child protection case details
From the Information Commissioner’s Office: The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has today served a monetary penalty of £130,000 to Powys County Council for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act where the details of a child protection case were sent to the wrong recipient. The penalty is the highest that the ICO has served since it…
Contra Costa County warns of patient privacy breach
Contra Costa County officials mailed out notices Friday warning that the names of residents who owed money to the county health department were inadvertently published in a public document, violating patient privacy. The names were published in a report to the Board of Supervisors dated July 27, 2010. It was generated by the County’s Office…
Hospital janitor and girlfriend charged with stealing patients' identities
Naomi Martin reports: Federal prosecutors charged a Westwego couple Friday with stealing the identities of hospital patients to finance thousands of dollars’ worth of purchases, including an $800 diamond ring and a 42-inch plasma television, according to court documents filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office. Clyde Washington, 50, allegedly stole patient documents while employed as…
UK: South Central SHA data breaches affect over 1,800 staff
Health Service Journal calls attention to two breaches that occurred in October involving the South Central Strategic Health Authority (SHA) of NHS South of England. According to the December board minutes: The [first] incident occurred in the human resources team in October 2011. The hard copy personnel file was removed from the secure human resources…
Members of Congress want answers fromTRICARE Management on SAIC breach
Five members of the House of Representatives have sent a letter to TRICARE Management Authority concerning the recent SAIC breach that affected over 4.9 million members of the military and their dependents. In a series of questions, the legislators ask for details as to TRICARE’s policies and, in particular, any policies or contracts it had…