All practices in England and Wales will be required to use the NHS number as the national unique patient identifier by this time next year, following a new Safer Practice Notice (SPN) issued today (18 September 2008). The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), together with NHS Connecting for Health (in England) and Informing Healthcare (in…
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UK: Access to prescribing data blocked for sessional GPs
Sessional GPs are being barred from obtaining personal prescribing data that will be essential for revalidation. IT systems including EMIS, the system most widely used in UK practices, do not recognise sessional GPs’ prescribing numbers, thus blocking access to their personal prescribing data. The problem remains despite the DoH agreeing that sessional GPs should have…
HSE laptop containing personal information stolen
The HSE is confirming that a laptop, blackberry phone and a data disk containing the personal information of more than 1,000 healthcare workers has been stolen. The Executive is apologising for the incident and has begun contacting those affected. In a statement, the HSE says the laptop, blackberry and data disk were stolen from the…
New oversight, stiffer penalties approved for snooping into patient records
Patrick McGreevy reports in the Los Angeles Times:
Security Breach: More Laws Needed. Let's Add Health Care
Over on InformationWeek, George Hulme is singing our tune: […] But let’s just stick to health care. More than 1.5 million patient records at hospitals have been exposed by data breaches during 2006 and 2007, according to the 2008 HIMSS Analytics Report: Security of Patient Data, commissioned by Kroll Fraud Solutions. That begs the question:…
Who's reading your medical files today?
Sue A. Blevins of nstitute for Health Freedom in Washington writes in the Christian Science Monitor: How would you feel about your personal health information flowing freely over the Internet between public health officials, healthcare providers, insurance and data clearinghouse companies, and others – without your permission? If this doesn’t sound like a good idea,…