Gina Pothoff reports: Some 260 patients with records in the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department will receive notification letters explaining that a Health Care Center employee illegally accessed their personal health information. The department announced the unauthorized data breach Wednesday, saying a staff member accessed electronic information for an unapproved academic research project. Read more on…
Category: U.S.
Cottage Health Notifying 11,000 Patients Whose Records Were Exposed
Tom Bolton reports that Cottage Health, which suffered a HIPAA breach in 2013 due to a vendor error (by InSync) that exposed over 50,000 patients‘ information, has suffered another exposure breach: Cottage Health’s efforts to protect the confidentiality of hospital patient records suffered a setback earlier this fall when one of its computer servers was found to be…
Chinese government has arrested hackers it says breached OPM database
If I knew emojis, I’d include one for “highly skeptical” to accompany this story. Ellen Nakashima reports: The Chinese government recently arrested a handful of hackers it says were connected to the breach of Office of Personnel Management’s database earlier this year, a mammoth break-in that exposed the records of more than 22 million current…
University of Rochester Medical Center settles NYS Attorney General charges stemming from HIPAA breach
Back in May, I noted that University of Rochester Medical Center was notifying 3,000 patients because a departing employee had taken patient information with her for her new employer to use to recruit patients. Now NYS Attorney General Schneiderman has announced a settlement with URMC over the HIPAA breach. The settlement requires the center to pay a $15,000…
State law claims in Anthem breach tossed because ERISA pre-empts
And yet another blow to would-be plaintiffs in data breach litigation: you can’t raise claims under state law if ERISA applies and covers all the claims. Joe Lustig reports: For the second time this year, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has ruled that state law claims arising from Anthem’s February data…
OH: Thousands Of Medical Records Containing Confidential Info Found In Dumpster
Maureen Kocot reports: A good Samaritan says he was surprised when he discovered thousands of documents marked confidential in a dumpster. 10TV examined the documents and found medical records containing patients’ social security numbers, dates of birth, as well as detailed information about medical conditions and prescriptions. […] The Ohio Medical Board says it has…