A La Crescenta man pleaded guilty today to federal criminal charges of defrauding Medicare by using patients’ Medicare identification numbers without their knowledge, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Matthew Friedrich and U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Thomas P. O’Brien announced. Between August 2003 and April 2008, Melkon...
A consortium of US healthcare, technology and research leaders have joined forces in a first-of-its-kind research study to assess the behavioural impact of personal genetic testing on people who choose to receive such screenings to identify their potential risk for developing certain diseases. Sponsored by the US Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI), the study...
HEALTH workers have been threatened with police action if they break data protection laws. In a note to NHS Lothian staff, bosses said there was a “zero tolerance” approach to the issue. The reminder comes after a memory stick containing 137 patient records was lost earlier this year. Read more in Edinburgh Evening News
Rebecca Vessely reports: Many Americans want electronic health records, and say they would access their personal health information online, but the majority are concerned about confidentiality issues, according to a survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization. But just 12% reported they are extremely or very confident that their...
Lauren King reports: A Virginia Beach man pleaded guilty today to aggravated identity theft and participating in a scheme to defraud Navy Federal Credit Union, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the eastern district of Virginia. Jorge Luis Silva-Davalos, 29, is to be sentenced Jan. 22 and faces...
Ohio Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical Tuesday that hundreds of medical records from an abortion clinic are important to the case of a 14-year-old girl impregnated by her soccer coach and who had an abortion without her parents’ consent. In a case that seeks access to private medical files on behalf of a single...
HEALTH chiefs apologised after admitting they don’t know what happened to the nursing records of thousands of patients stored on a computer database. The machine, containing a range of sensitive details including patients’ individual ailments, was supposed to be destroyed during an upgrade at the Gospel Oak Health Centre, in Lismore Circus. But bosses...
Kathryn Foxhall reports: A coalition of public and private groups, including the Department of Defense and the U.S. Secret Service, will open a center at Indiana University study identity theft, including the growing area of health care fraud. The 19 partners in the Center for Applied Identity Management Research (CAIMR) include IBM, LexisNexis, Lockheed...
Jaikumar Vijayan reports: Health care organizations that operate in California have two more good reasons to be sure that they comply with the data security and privacy requirements of the federal HIPAA law. Last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law two pieces of legislation that significantly increase state fines for security and...
Ann Zeigler reports: The FTC plans to issue a new consumer protection rule that will take on the issue of medical identity theft, a growing concern now that identity thieves have recognized that medical records are rich sources of financial information that can be used to obtain credit with someone else’s history. Alternate forms...