Category: Uncategorized

Amy Smart reports: Firefighters, police and paramedics are applauding a new law that will help determine whether they’ve been exposed to communicable diseases on the job. The Emergency Intervention Disclosure Act, passed May 31, allows emergency workers to get court orders compelling blood samples from people in high-risk situations. Before the legislation, workers waited months…

Here’s a follow-up on a breach originally reported last year. Michael Lee reports: Following a leak of client information, the Australian Privacy Commissioner has determined that Medvet Laboratories breached the Privacy Act, despite there being no client bank account details, customer names or test results exposed online. The privacy bungle was first reported by The Australian on 16…

APNZ and The Herald report: A memo advising HealthCare New Zealand staff to be careful with client files was among more than 50 patient health records and documents found on a Christchurch street. The documents were found on the street in Merivale on Saturday afternoon after they were taken from a HealthCare NZ employee’s private…

Since 2007, I have been covering the lawsuit against Nebraska over the identities of patients buried at state mental hospitals anonymously.  It was a case that pitted open records against the privacy – as such – of the dead and their descendants, and in my earliest posts, I argued for privacy and non-disclosure. But here’s…

Matthew Rozsa writes: To what extent does the public have the right to know about the mental health of its politicians? This is what we should be asking ourselves after the revelation that Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is receiving “intensive medical treatment at a residential treatment facility for a mood disorder.” Although his doctor claims that Jackson…

Phil Galewitz When the University of Pennsylvania Health System sought new patients for its lung transplant service last year, it turned to Facebook and Google. The results of the $20,000 advertising campaign on the websites exceeded administrators’ expectations. During a few weeks in August and September, more than 4,600 people clicked on the ads and…