Heather J. Chin reports: University of Pennsylvania Health System notified an undisclosed number of patients this week that an encrypted backup tape containing personal and credit information was lost in transit by an outside carrier. Affected persons are those who made payments to UPHS between Feb. 25 and April 25. More – The Bulletin
Michael P. McKinney reports: A former security guard at Rhode Island Hospital has pleaded guilty in federal court to stealing patients’ and job applicants’ identity information and using it to open cell phone and charge accounts at RadioShack. Prosecutor Adi Goldstein said at the plea hearing the government could show that from April...
Brian Stanley reports: It’s said to know who you really are, you should look into your heart. But police say one man used someone else’s identity while undergoing heart surgery and left a mentally disabled man on the hook for $350,000 in medical costs. Full story – The Herald News
Michelle Laczkoski reports in the Milford Daily News: Calling it the “most outrageous, untenable cases to ever come across (his) desk,” Worcester Superior Court Judge John McCann today sentenced a 55-year-old former Milford woman to five to seven years in prison for her role in an elaborate identify theft case. Charlotte A. Boehm pleaded...
The AP is reporting two arrests involving theft of personal and medical information from 6 Alzheimer’s patients at an unnamed Buford nursing home. The patients became victims of identity fraud. One of those arrested, Iniabel Ferrer, worked at the nursing home.
Reprinted from REPORT ON PATIENT PRIVACY, the industry’s most practical source of news on HIPAA patient privacy provisions. For the first time, a covered entity (CE) under the privacy and security rules has made a $100,000 payment to Uncle Sam and agreed to subject itself to three years of monitoring by HHS for losing...
AP reports: A Bloomington doctor who dumped patients’ sensitive medical records into the trash has been fined $1,250 by state officials. Dr. J.B. O’Donnell agreed to the fines and promised to post information about the possible security breach on his Web site for 30 days. The records contained patients’ names, addresses, birth dates,...
The BNY Mellon breach apparently affected patient account info, as well. The incident occurred in April, and letters first went out this month. Eileen Smith of the Courier-Post reports: People who have made payments to the University of Pennsylvania Health System have been notified that tapes containing personal information about their accounts have gone...
Jessica Salter reports in the Telegraph: Her job at a hospital in Stockholm is now at risk after she put 14 photos from a brain surgery and a back operation to her account on the popular social networking site. One showed the operating assistant holding indeterminate parts of the patient’s body. The chief of...
Clark Kauffman has an article in the Des Moines Register about medical snooping and HIPAA violations in Iowa that makes for an interesting, if unsurprising, read: When Jill went to her doctor two years ago for an operation on her uterus, she didn’t expect that details of her problem would later appear in the...