Marc Silvistrini of the Republican-American reports: A former Saint Mary’s Hospital employee has been charged by police in the theft of names and social security numbers of a half dozen patients, a hospital official and state police said Tuesday. State police told the hospital the thefts were confined to the Endoscopy Department and affect the…
Canada: Pending law will highlight health-record privacy: Wiseman
New rules governing health records will strengthen Newfoundland and Labrador patients’ privacy, the health minister said Tuesday. Ross Wiseman told a news conference that the new Protection of Personal Health Information Act, which is currently before the house of assembly, will more clearly spell out how a patient’s data can be used, and by whom….
UF warns patients of security breach
University of Florida officials will be notifying about 1,900 patients of a UF plastic surgeon that their private health information might have been breached after the information was managed and disposed of improperly. Dr. Francis D. Ong, a UF assistant professor of plastic surgery at the UF College of Medicine-Jacksonville, stored unsecured digital photographs of…
NHS disc containing sensitive data lost
Caroline Gammell reports in the Telegraph: A computer disc containing the medical records of more than 38,000 NHS patients went missing when it was sent to a software company to be backed up – in case the records got lost. The information, which dates back 10 years, was mislaid somewhere between London and Sandown Health…
Patients get control over health information access
IBM and HIPAAT – the leading provider of consent management solutions to the healthcare industry – are joining forces to bring innovative health-information privacy controls to patients and care providers. The IBM-HIPAAT collaboration extends patient-driven privacy to Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Personal Health Records (PHRs) and Health Information Exchanges (HIEs). Combined…
Just Looking: Consumer Use of the Internet to Manage Care
The California HealthCare Foundation released a new report last week: Just Looking: Consumer Use of the Internet to Manage Care [pdf]. From the introduction to the report: A recent Pew Internet and American Life survey showed that 80 percent of consumers search the Internet for health-related information. Yet their relationship to health information on the…