Marianne Kolbasuk McGee reports: Is the Federal Trade Commission overstepping its regulatory authority – and using questionable sources of information – in pursuing data security enforcement actions against companies, including healthcare entities, for alleged unfair and deceptive trade practices? Members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform considered that and other questions during…
Search Results for: HCA
Do You Know Where Your Health Data Are?
Marlisse Silver Sweeney reports: It’s like Hansel and Gretel, reversed. Bryant Storm, on Wolters Kluwer Law & Health Blog writes, “each day, most of us leave behind a trail of data that can be used to construct a detailed health profile.” This is perhaps scarier than any wicked witch wanting to bake you alive and eat…
Are Patient Privacy Laws Being Misused to Protect Medical Centers?
by Charles Ornstein ProPublica, July 24, 2014, 11:30 a.m. This story was co-published with NPR’s “Shots” blog. In the name of patient privacy, a security guard at a hospital in Springfield, Missouri, threatened a mother with jail for trying to take a photograph of her own son. In the name of patient privacy , a…
Women & Infants Hospital to Pay $150,000 to Settle Data Breach Allegations Involving Massachusetts Patients
There’s a follow-up to a breach disclosed in November 2012: Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island (WIH) has agreed to pay $150,000 to resolve allegations that it failed to protect the personal information and protected health information of more than 12,000 patients in Massachusetts, Attorney General Martha Coakley announced today. The consent judgment, approved…
Johns Hopkins settles privacy breach lawsuit for $190M
Back in February 2013, we learned of a horrific privacy breach in which a gynecologist had been secretly recording his female patients. His conduct had been reported to the hospital by a female co-worker and he was fired. The files were found in his home after he committed suicide. In March of 2013, some of his…
What HIPAA doesn't cover
Erin McCann writes: Sure, HIPAA adds a layer of privacy protection for certain health data — if organizations actually comply with it — but there remains myriad avenues of mining health data and selling to the highest bidder that do not fall under the purview of HIPAA’s privacy and security rules. And they may surprise…