In the justice system: Nakeshia Brown, a former patient care assistant at Memorial Hermann Hospital, is facing charges of identity theft and bank fraud for allegedly stealing patients’ info to use to open credit cards. More. In 2003, the hospital was also involved in data breach involving a dishonest employee who stole patient information and…
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Medical groups oppose federal identity theft policy
Nancy L. Perkins of Orthpedics Today reports: Health care professionals are potentially at risk of federal sanctions if they had not implement a written program to prevent identity theft by August 1. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), health care providers who regularly bill patients for services after they are rendered are “creditors†within…
Update: Virginia Health Data Potentially Held Hostage
Thomas Claburn of InformationWeek reports: An extortion demand posted on WikiLeaks seeks $10 million to return over 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions allegedly stolen from Virginia Department of Health Professions. The note reads: “ATTENTION VIRGINIA I have your sh**! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of…
Another breach raises questions about the security of online health data
First it was an extortion demand made to Express Scripts in October 2008, followed by similar threats to some of their clients that members’ personal information and prescription data would be exposed on the web if the company didn’t pay up. Now the Virginia Department of Health Professions is also on the receiving end of…
UK: Stolen laptops held details of 10,000
Amanda Crook of The Manchester Evening News reports that the paper learned of two more breaches involving NHS by using Freedom of Information requests: Two laptops containing patient data were stolen during break-ins at The Christie. The laptops contained names, hospital numbers, some addresses and test results. A computer with the names, addresses, dates of…
Do You Know Where Your Data Are?
Bruce Schneier had a pointed article in the Wall Street Journal this week: Do you know what your data did last night? Almost none of more than 27 million people who took the RealAge quiz realized that their personal health data was sold to drug companies, who in turned used that information for targeted e-mail…