Jordan Press writes in The Kingston Whig-Standard: A Kingston woman who had to hand over personal medical records to get on an Air Canada flight home was expected to finally arrive some time last night. Patricia Whiteside-Bell stood in line ready to head through the metal detectors at the airport in Fort McMurray, Alta., Saturday…
L.A. woman accused of stealing stars' medical info
Dan Whitcomb reports: A former hospital worker implicated in the theft of medical records for “Charlie’s Angels” star Farrah Fawcett, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife and some 60 other celebrities and selling them to the media has been indicted on federal charges. Lawanda Jackson, a former low-level administrative specialist at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles,…
Identity theft drug scheme spanned 11 states
In an update to a previous story, Scott Daughterty of The Capital reports: The Garrett County woman didn’t have back pain. She didn’t visit hospitals in 11 states to get prescription pain killers to help her cope. Still, federal prosecutors said, the hospitals kept sending her bills demanding payment for those medications and services. One…
Medical Data Breaches Put Patients at Risk
Kim S. Nash writes in CIO: Doctors can’t cure the common cold and health care IT managers apparently can’t stop the common data breach. Twenty-one of the 101 of the breaches tracked so far this year by information security group Attrition.org occurred at health care organizations. Well, that’s not right, as I pointed out in…
Are Your Medical Records at Risk?
Sarah Rubenstein writes in the Wall Street Journal: When it comes to protecting the privacy of patients’ computerized information, the main threat the health-care industry faces isn’t from hackers, but from itself. Read the full story at WSJ
Concord Regional Visiting Nurse Association reports laptop stolen
The Concord Regional Visiting Nurse Association reported [pdf] to the New Hampshire Department of Justice that a laptop was stolen from a staff member’s vehicle on April 16. The laptop contained birth date and social security numbers for 15 clients. CRVNA believes that the risk of ID theft is low because of the three levels…