Pamela Cowan reports: Protecting the privacy of patients trumps raising donor dollars for the province’s hospital foundations — at least for now. This spring, the provincial government amended health privacy regulations so health regions could share with their local hospital foundation the names and addresses of people who’d received hospital services. The policy set out…
Is “Data Mining” of Prescription and Patient Records Protected By the First Amendment?
Naomi Freundlich writes: A year ago, I wrote about how pharmaceutical companies are increasingly paying third parties like IMS Health or CVS-Caremark to provide them with the prescribing records and identification information for individual doctors. Armed with this information, drug companies—sometimes taking on the role of “concerned experts”—can tailor their marketing directly to these doctors;…
Boss orders female staff to wear red bracelets when they are on their periods
I had to check the site twice to make sure this wasn’t a satire site as this is just so outrageous. Ian Sparks reports: A boss in Norway has ordered all female staff to wear red bracelets during their periods – to explain why they are using the toilet more often. The astonishing demand was…
Nova Scotia health legislation too restrictive on media, professor says
A journalism professor in Nova Scotia says provincial legislation aimed at protecting personal health records could hinder the media because it threatens to fine or jail reporters who seek medical information. Fred Vallance-Jones, who teaches at the University of King’s College in Halifax, says he supports efforts to protect privacy of medical information. But he…
Is JCPenney Giving Your Personal Info To Strangers?
Chris Morgan of The Consumerist relays this report by a concerned J C Penney customer: My wife was contacted by a complete stranger who was able to track her down because while she was shopping on JCPenney’s site, my wife’s information appeared in place of hers in her cart (including address, etc…). People are having…
CO: Informants outed in accidental Grand Junction data release
The Associated Press reports: The names of confidential drug informants, home addresses of sheriff’s deputies and troves of other sensitive data were made public for months because of a mistake by an employee of Mesa County’s technology department, officials said. Thousands of the internal records were accessible on the Internet starting in April until the…