Here’s today’s reminder of the insider threat. It’s a shame they don’t explain how the employee was able to access the patient’s information or why it was accessed. From the U.S.A.O. of the Western District of Michigan: GRAND RAPIDS – U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten today announced that Jessica Nicole Pitcher,…
Category: U.S.
HHS OCR Imposes a $548,265 Penalty Against Children’s Hospital Colorado for HIPAA Violations
Not all monetary penalties are for breaches affecting large numbers of patients. In this case, HHS imposed a penalty on an entity that had breaches in both 2017 and 2020. DataBreaches notes that the 2017 incident affected 3,370 patients, and the 2020 incident affected 2,553 patients — as reported to HHS at the time. Today,…
Failure to terminate access can be costly. Very costly.
Earlier today, DataBreaches posted an HHS OCR announcement of a settlement with a HIPAA covered entity. A former contractor had accessed its electronic medical record system on three occasions without authorization to retrieve PHI for use in potential fraudulent Medicare claims. OCR imposed a monetary penalty of $1.19 million for the entity’s failure to: conduct…
Major energy contractor reports ‘limited’ access to IT after ransomware locks files
Jessica Lyons reports: American energy contractor ENGlobal disclosed that access to its IT systems remains limited following a ransomware infection in late November. In a Monday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company said it became aware of a cybersecurity incident on November 25 after criminals broke into its networks and locked…
Change Healthcare Data Breach Settlement Talks To Be Explored Early in MDL
Irvin Jackson reports: Parties involved in the federal Change Healthcare data breach lawsuits have been ordered to meet separately with a U.S. Magistrate Judge over the next two months, to discuss the most effective structure for settlement talks and the optimum timing for when negotiations should begin that may provide payouts to millions of Americans. The potential…
HHS Office for Civil Rights Imposes a $1.19 Million Penalty Against Gulf Coast Pain Consultants for HIPAA Security Rule Violations
In April 2019, DataBreaches reported that Gulf Coast Pain Consultants, LLC d/b/a Clearway Pain Solutions Institute had recently notified patients after discovering on February 20 that their EMR system had been accessed by a third party without authorization. At the time, they disclosed that 35,000 patients had been affected but they did not indicate that…