A computer virus disabled the automated response system of St John communication centres across the country this week. Ambulance communications operations manager Alan Goudge said systems were back up and running yesterday morning after being attacked by the virus on Wednesday night. The incident forced staff to allocate ambulances manually but it is still unknown…
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Senator Franken considering legislation to encourage (but not require?) encryption for healthcare and OMR providers
Coverage by Diana Bartz of Reuter’s from today’s Senate subcommittee hearing on protecting health information privacy in a digital world: […] “We know from the statistics on breaches that have occurred since the notification provisions went into effect in 2009 that the healthcare industry appears to be rarely encrypting data,” according to written testimony by Deven…
Medical Records Stolen From Unlocked Hospital Boxes
Colleen Henry reports on a breach involving Columbia-St. Mary’s Ozaukee Hospital in Wisconsin that highlights some recurring problems with both breaches and breach notifications. I’m excerpting her excellent reporting to make a few points: Investigators said a janitor fed patient records to gang members. The lead investigator said a sworn statement that a janitor had…
(update) 'No identity theft in Tallaght data breach'
Niall Hunter reports: The Data Protection Commissioner has said no evidence has emerged of patient identity theft or the selling of patient data taking place as a result of a major medical data breach at Dublin’s Tallaght Hospital. During the summer, the Commissioner started investigating a major data protection breach arising in relation to the…
Thousands of X-rays stolen from St. Joseph hospital
Wow. I no sooner get done blogging about x-ray theft and lo, there’s another one. Andrea K. Walker reports: Baltimore County police are looking for someone who stole thousands of X-rays from St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson in what they believe was a scheme to extract the silver from the images. The hospital said Friday that someone posed as a…
Security Breach at Lawrence Memorial Hospital
A public notice issued by Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Lawrence, Kansas that appeared on 6News (but not, apparently, on the hospital’s web site yet): On October 28, 2011, Lawrence Memorial Hospital learned that certain information maintained by Mid Continent Credit Services, Inc., d/b/a Blue Sky Credit, the hospital’s vendor for online patient bill-pay services, was inadvertently…