In response to the guilty plea by three employees of St. Vincent Health System, reported here earlier today, Dr. Deborah Peel of PatientPrivacyRights.org issued the following statement: Facebook users can keep people from seeing their walls, but patients can’t keep anyone from seeing their electronic medical records. What’s interesting is how severe the penalties could…
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Free Webinar: Detecting Record Snooping & Automating Compliance
As reported by AIS Health.com and Report on Patient Privacy, under ARRA HITECH medical record snooping is now considered a privacy breach. The HITECH Act’s definition of a ‘breach’ now applies to when a person snoops into patient records: “The term ‘breach’ means the unauthorized acquisition, access, use, or disclosure of protected health information which…
Seeking Bypass: What Will Ultimately End Confidence in the Necessity of Parental Involvement Laws?
On July 14, 2009, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in Zbaraz v. Madigan, lifting the injunction of the 1995 Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act. Public discourse about parental involvement laws for minors seeking abortions has been quiet in recent years. Many believe that such statutes are common place and the…
SE: Abortion register splits Alliance parties
A proposal to include the identities of women in a national abortion register has divided the governing Alliance coalition parties. The Christian Democrats are positive to the register which would record the identity of the women involved. The Moderates, Centre party and Liberal party are however opposed to the move on integrity grounds, according to…
Online gene testers propose their own regulations
After gene testing businesses were criticized by state regulators last year for marketing to California residents without a license to perform clinical laboratory tests, the industry decided it was time for new regulations — which it decided to write. A bill drafted by 23andMe and introduced by state Sen. Alex Padilla (D-San Fernando Valley) would…
Hotline for UCSD patients swamped
The hotline established by UCSD’s Moores Cancer Center after a hacker breached the center’s computers and gained access to patients’personal information has been swamped with hundreds of calls from worried patients. Their primary concern has been whether their Social Security numbers were among the information stolen by whomever obtained the electronic files of 30,000 patients,…