California health regulators have connected 14 more people affiliated with UCLA Medical Center, including four physicians, to the improper viewing of celebrity medical records, it was reported Tuesday. The latest evidence brings the number of current and former workers apparently implicated in the snooping scandal to 68, the Los Angeles Times reported. The additional...
Lisa A. Davis of The Tampa Tribune reports: A 46-year-old nurse’s aid was arrested Friday by Dade City police, accused of stealing a patient’s identity to obtain credit cards. Marius Volcilla Cheatum “used her position” to get personal information from a resident at The Edwinola Retirement Community, 14325 Edwinola Way, and then was issued...
Police in Hampton are looking for a woman who they’d previously arrested for prescription fraud, only to discover after her release that the identification she provided was false. It turns out that the ID she provided belonged to a victim of identity theft. The department issued the following news release with details about the...
Reprinted from REPORT ON PATIENT PRIVACY, the industry’s most practical source of news on HIPAA patient privacy provisions. To catch the notorious “BTK” killer, police collected the DNA of more than 1,300 men. In the end, it was the DNA of just one person — a woman, his daughter — that led to...
In response to continuing interest in HHS enforcement of the HIPAA Privacy Rule, the Office for Civil Rights today made available to the public additional information about these activities. OCR has added a new data section on its Compliance and Enforcement Web Site. The public can now access enhanced information about several aspects of...
Tony Collins writes in ComputerWeekly: The Sun has reported on a potential security breach with the “Choose and Book” system – part of the NHS’s National Programme for IT – at a GP practice at Essex. The paper has an editorial piece about the potential breach under the headline “Data Dunces”. The Sun...
Glenn Nyback of the Staten Island Advance reports: As tens of thousands of Staten Island University Hospital patients seethe over the decision by hospital administrators to wait four months before informing them that a computer containing their personal information was stolen, SIUH’s chief executive conceded officials could have handled the situation differently. The hospital...
Two of the more interesting findings from the May 2008 HIMSS Vantage Point report : 49% of respondents have agreed that the biggest barrier that they face to the use of a personal health record is a concern that their information will be private and secure. 92% of respondents indicated that they, the patient,...
On Saturday, May 3, the Deschutes County Mental Health Department sent certified letters to 50 individuals who received services from the Department during 2005-06. The letters inform the clients that the location of their copied service documents, mailed through the U.S. Postal Service to the State, is unknown. The letter also offers assistance from...
Danger, Will Robinson! Nancy Ferris reports in Government Health IT: Multi-stakeholder collaboratives? No way. Public-private partnerships to develop health information exchanges? Forget about it. For-profit, businesslike HIEs are the way to go in the current environment, according to a company president who says the free enterprise model can deliver results better, faster and cheaper....