Alicia Stice and Alex Schiffer report: When Beth Stubbs receives a prescription for painkillers from a faraway state, she knows she’s likely in for some extra work. The pharmacist at Kilgore’s Pharmacy has seen an influx of out-of-state prescriptions in the past year and a half, and she thinks she knows why: Missouri is the…
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A mess of privacy and confidentiality issues raised by the Stephen Collins case
You expect your therapy session to be held in strictest confidence, right? But what if your spouse is present in the therapy session and records it – and goes public with it. What then? The Stephen Collins – Faye Grant divorce case raises a number of concerning questions as to who recorded a therapy session they…
NC: Central Dermatology Center notifies patients after discovering malware had been inserted in their system in 2012
Central Dermatology Center (“Central”) announced on November 7, 2014 that on September 25, 2014 it became aware that one of its servers had been compromised by malicious software (“malware”). Central immediately consulted with forensic IT experts to identify and remove the malware and determine exactly what information on the server may have been accessed. The…
Breaking up is hard to do
In August, I reported on a dispute between the State of Texas Department of Health and Human Services and Xerox State Healthcare (formerly ACS Healthcare). The dispute arose after Texas terminated its contract with Xerox, who had operated the state’s Medicaid program and orthodontia pre-authorization program. Texas claimed that Xerox had not returned all records and…
Is HHS still dealing with ADP breach from 2012?
I have to confess I was somewhat surprised to see that HHS’s public breach tool is still adding affected entities to the Advanced Data Processing incident. Whether HHS is just getting around to adding them or whether the entities are first discovering and/or reporting that their patients were involved is not known to me. Readers may…
Updated details on the Penn Highlands Brookville hacking incident
Last month, Penn Highlands Brookville in Pennsylvania disclosed a breach affecting patients of Dr. Barry Snyder. The breach did not affect Dr. Snyder or PHB directly, but rather, it appeared that the firm hosting his patient records may have been compromised. At the time, PHB did not name the third-party vendor. Nor did they indicate how many patients were…