I recently noted that HHS’s breach tool had revealed some breaches we hadn’t known about. One of them was from Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts. I contacted them to request a copy of their statement or press release, and was told that because there were less than 500 patients affected in Massachusetts, they had…
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HHS fines hospice $50,000 over laptop stolen from car
I was surprised to read this morning that Hospice of North Idaho had settled charges by HHS over a laptop stolen from an employee’s car in the summer of 2010. I was surprised, in part, because I was not aware of this incident at all as it had not appeared in HHS’s breach tool. Since…
Health-care sector vulnerable to hackers (and other security problems), researchers say
This will come as absolutely no surprise to regular readers of this blog, but The Washington Post has published the results of an investigation into security in the healthcare sector, and the results are… well, what I’d expect. The article is instructive for the range of problems it covers and some real-world examples. Many of…
Nurses turning to un-authorized smartphones to meet data demands
John Cox reports: A new study finds that more than two-thirds of nurses are using their personal smartphones for clinical communications. Yet 95% of nurses in the sample say hospital IT departments don’t support that use for fear of security risks. The report, “Healthcare without Bounds: Point of Care Computing for Nursing 2012,” by Spyglass Consulting Group, points to the…
Five breaches newly disclosed by HHS's breach tool
On Friday, HHS added 14 new incident reports to its breach tool. Half of them are organizations affected by the ADPI breach, and I’ve added their numbers to the list I’ve been keeping of affected organizations and number notified of that incident. Another breach HHS added today was one already covered on this blog….
CCS Medical employee may have accessed and disclosed Social Security numbers for a tax refund fraud scheme
Although it’s flown under the media’s radar so far, CCS Medical has notified states, law enforcement, HHS, and the IRS that an employee may have accessed and disclosed customers’ and patients’ Social Security numbers for a tax refund fraud scheme. And yes, this took place in Florida. Interestingly (to me, anyway), the dates of possible…