Posted on September 3rd, 2010 by Catherine Obuch
Healthcare accounted for just 3 percent of the data breaches reviewed by Verizon and the U.S. Secret Service according to a new report on cybercrime. The biggest targets, not surprisingly, were financial services organizations, accounting for 33 percent of the breaches. Hospitality and retail organizations were the second most frequented targets, accounting for 23 and [...]
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Filed under: Privacy
Posted on August 30th, 2010 by Catherine Obuch
Two employees were fired from an Iowa hospital for allegedly looking through patients’ medical records purely for personal interest, reports the Des Moines Register.
Krystal Selby, a patient-orders coordinator at Mahaska County Hospital, was fired for looking at the medical records of her current boyfriend’s ex-wife and a volunteer at the hospital. Shiloh Phillips, another Mahaska [...]
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Filed under: Privacy
Posted on August 28th, 2010 by Catherine Obuch
THE loathed Coalition health and welfare Access Card is suddenly back on the agenda.
Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey is proposing to use the mandatory new healthcare identifiers to monitor people on benefits.
A spokeswoman for Mr Hockey said the idea was not Coalition policy, but would be considered by an Abbott government.
However Mr Hockey told The [...]
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Filed under: Government, Health, Information Technology, Privacy
Posted on August 26th, 2010 by Catherine Obuch
The unshredded records included pathology reports with patients’ names, addresses, and results of breast, bone, and skin cancer tests, as well as the results of lab work following miscarriages.
By law, medical records and documents containing personal identifying information must be disposed of in a way that protects privacy, and leaving them at a dump is [...]
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Filed under: Privacy, Records Management
Posted on August 24th, 2010 by Catherine Obuch
Does your hospital have a social media policy? And if so, does it extend to employee use of sites not hosted by your organization?
One thing I’ve noticed while perusing hospital social media policies that were lurking on the web is that most seem to refer only to terms and conditions that apply to medical center-sponsored [...]
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Filed under: Career, Information Technology, Management, Privacy
Posted on August 23rd, 2010 by Catherine Obuch
Google’s chief has put forth a novel solution for today’s teenagers whose wild online antics threaten to follow them into their adult life: change your name.
His comments come as the search giant attempts to allay public concern about plans to commercialise its ever-increasing pile of data. Schmidt’s prediction for those wanting to distance themselves from [...]
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Filed under: Privacy
Posted on August 23rd, 2010 by Catherine Obuch
More than 100 pages of medical records related to a veteran’s heart condition and benefit claims went missing, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
George Wincapaw, a 63-year-old Vietnam War veteran who for years turned in paperwork to the Veterans Benefits Administration of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), was recently asked for copies of medical [...]
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Filed under: Privacy, Records Management
Posted on August 16th, 2010 by Catherine Obuch
Instead of treating a 60-year-old stabbing victim after his initial arrival at St. Mary Medical Center’s ER, nurses and other staff took photos of the man and posted them on Facebook, the Los Angeles Times reports.
William Wells, the patient, had been stabbed more than 12 times by a fellow nursing home resident. His throat was [...]
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Filed under: Privacy
Posted on August 13th, 2010 by Catherine Obuch
For the first half of 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights has reported 119 instances of medical record breaches which have put at risk some 5 million patients’ healthcare information, says Cathy Leahy, CEO of Datamed Health Informatics based in Bellingham, Wash. in a recent Hospital Impact posting.
The [...]
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Filed under: Information Technology, Privacy, Records Management
Posted on August 10th, 2010 by Catherine Obuch
An employee at Oakwood Hospital in Michigan was fired after she posted negative comments about a patient on Facebook, WJBK Fox 2 reports.
In her post, Cheryl James said she came face-to-face with a cop killer and hoped he rotted in hell. She also posted another remark WJBK would not repeat.
This latest social media incident comes [...]
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Filed under: Information Technology, Privacy
