Philip Janquart reports: Kaiser intentionally performed HIV tests on thousands of health plan members without their consent, alleges a class action complaint filed in Clark County Superior Court. Lead plaintiff Mary E. Benton claims Kaiser instituted a new protocol in April 2013 that required members between 50 and 65 to receive Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)…
Category: Uncategorized
Obamacare: no criminal background check required to be a Navigator?
As I’ve commented previously, there are valid security concerns to be raised about the healthcare.gov site and system. Here’s one of them, in my opinion: Yesterday, during a congressional hearing, Kathleen Sebelius acknowledged that there are no criminal background checks required by the Affordable Care Act for those who serve as Navigators. States may have…
It's too easy for others to buy your medical information
Privacy advocates tend to know the following, but I suspect the general public doesn’t and would be a bit shocked. Laura Hutchinson of WWLP in Massachusetts, reported in a piece on medical identity theft: The 22News I-Team did an experiment and found we didn’t have to pay any money at all to find out names…
Two Floridians plead guilty in connection with Sunshine Pharmacy health care fraud scheme
Delmer Holmes Parrish, 44, a licensed pharmacist, and Patricia Parrish, 74, both of Naples, Florida, today pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud. According to the plea agreement, from in or around February 2009 through in or about July 2012, the two participated in a conspiracy to defraud federal health care benefit programs…
Healthcare security standard launched to end data breach blunders
Dan Worth reports: A new security certification for the healthcare sector is aiming to provide a gold standard for those handling sensitive data. The HealthCare Information Security and Privacy Practitioner (HCISPP) standard has been put together by information security body ISC² as a means of providing an industry-wide qualification for those handling sensitive data. Read more on…
A medication management app for consumers that makes sense to this patient privacy advocate
I’ve occasionally blogged about privacy and security concerns raised by mobile health applications. I’m happy to report that there’s now an app in beta-testing that may be very helpful to consumers without requiring consumers to sacrifice data security or privacy. The app automatically pulls in your prescription records from your pharmacy to enable you to…