Category: Uncategorized

I’ve occasionally (*cough*) expressed my frustration with HHS’s breach tool and the fact that breaches do not get added to the tool immediately, their fields are confusing and they don’t provide the narrative from the breached entity that might better describe or explain the breach, and you can’t get the breach reports until HHS has…

Business Record reports: Law enforcement personnel are investigating a data breach of West Des Moines-based UnityPoint Health‘s electronic medical records (EMR) system. Personal information of approximately 1,800 hospital patients from across UnityPoint Health’s operating regions may be at risk from the security breach in the system, which was discovered Aug. 8 during the course of…

Some good pointers on what should be included in your contract with vendors, from HealthITSecurity.com.

John Cairns reports: Letters are going out to 151 patients at Prairie North Health Region informing them of a privacy breach involving their personal information. The employee involved in the breach was not involved in the patients’ medical care, but had improperly accessed the patients’ personal health information between 2009 and 2012, considered a breach…

April Dembosky reports: The computer engineers at BabyCenter are often among the first people women tell they are pregnant. Mothers-to-be go to babycenter.com or sign up for the site’s mobile app to get advice long before they clear the first trimester and begin sharing their news with friends. Sometimes even before telling the baby’s father….

Among their duties, the California Department of Health (CDPH) investigates breaches. In this case, they had one of their own to report. In a letter dated September 26, they write:  We are writing to you because the California Department of Public Health, Center for Family Health, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program experienced a security…