KVOA reports that information on 8 patients of a Tucson doctor including their names, date of birth, Social Security numbers, and health insurance information wound up in a yard in Tempe. We won’t name the Tucson doctor involved because it is still unclear where the mistake was made, but we do know the company that handles his…
Senators Tester, Baucus: EPA’s release of personal information “unacceptable”
Montana Senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus are demanding that the EPA take immediate action to better protect the personal information of Montana ranchers after the agency accidentally released livestock producers’ names, addresses, and telephone numbers – not once, but twice. In response to a public information request, the EPA mistakenly distributed the personal information…
New guidance on data breaches in Belgium
I’ve been looking for an English language report on the new breach guidelines in Belgium and finally found one. Cédrine Morlière and Ludo Deklerck of Bird & Bird write: When the data breach results in a “public incident” (when a data breach results in a public leakage of private data), according to the guidance, the…
Dismissing a student for blogging about patients – free speech v. confidentiality agreements in the Sixth Circuit
Long-time readers may remember the case of Nina Yoder, a nursing student who was expelled from the University of Louisville School of Nursing [SON] in 2009 for allegedly breaching the honor code and confidentiality agreements she had signed by her posts on MySpace. A district judge had ordered her reinstatement in August 2009, and Yoder…
Hospital says credit card information for 2K patients possibly compromised
The compromise at web hosting firm E-dreamz, reported here earlier today, didn’t affect only Presbyterian Anesthesia Associates. According to Torie Wells, approximately 2,000 patients of Piedmont Healthcare were also affected: We were told that E-dreamz databases had been compromised and that credit card data of a number of our patients had been exposed,” said Gregory Guin,…
More details from Presbyterian Anesthesia Associates breach
HealthITSecurity.com has obtained more details on the breach affecting almost 10,000 patients of Presbyterian Anesthesia Associates. Apparently the data were encrypted, but the encryption key was acquired by whomever attacked the E-Dreamz server hosting the practice’s database.