A list of the covered entities that have reported health information data breaches impacting more than 500 people now has been posted by the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on its Web site.
Security company SecureWorks recently reported that attempted hacker attacks aimed at its healthcare clients doubled in the fourth quarter of 2009 from an average of 6,500 per healthcare client per day in the first nine months of 2009 to an average of 13,400 per client per day in the last three months of 2009.
Last month an external electronic data storage device containing patient health information for approximately 15,500 Northern California members of health insurance company Kaiser Permanente was stolen from an employee’s car at the employee’s home in Sacramento, Calif.
The internal affairs unit of the Detroit Police Department teamed up with the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion on Tuesday in the investigation of two recent incidents involving medical record theft that took place this fall from health programs within the city.
A subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives last week passed the Cybersecurity Coordination and Awareness Act of 2009, which included an amendment requiring the National Institute of Standards and Technology to add health IT systems to its cybersecurity research and development.
CalOptima, a Medicaid managed care plan serving Orange County, Calif., has identified the potential loss of past medical claims information for approximately 68,000 of its members that was stored on electronic media devices.
The University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine in Chapel Hill has begun notifying women who were part of a mammography research project that their Social Security numbers and other personal data may have been exposed when hackers breached the security of a database containing information recorded as part of the project—nearly two months after the breach occurred.
The Veterans Affairs Department has agreed to pay $20 million to veterans affected by the loss of a laptop computer in 2006 that contained sensitive personal identification information, as part of a proposed settlement to a lawsuit filed by five veterans' organizations.
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U.S. organizations continue to experience increased costs from data breaches, according to a recent study from the consulting firm Ponemon Institute. The average organizational cost of a data breach increased nearly 2 percent, from $6.65 million in 2008 to $6.75 million in 2009.
An estimated 500,000 BlueCross BlueShield members may be at risk for identify theft following an October data security breach at a Chattanooga, Tenn., office. While most of the at-risk members reside in Tennessee, BlueCross has identified 32 states with 500 or more members whose data may be at risk as of Jan. 8.
Connecticut Attorney General (AG) Richard Blumenthal announced Wednesday that he is suing Health Net of Connecticut for failing to secure private patient medical records and financial information involving 446,000 Connecticut enrollees and promptly notify consumers exposed by the security breach.
.A survey of U.S. health IT security professionals has found that 70 percent of them believe that senior healthcare managers do not view privacy and data security as a priority.
Clinical trial sites that do not adhere to the language written in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 requiring facilities to divulge privacy breaches to their patients, could pay up to a $50,000 penalty per violation.
Wake Radiology, a multisite radiology group in central North Carolina that performs more than 650,000 procedures annually, has decided it will no longer participate in studies that require personal patient information after the University of North Carolina (UNC) revealed that hackers breached the security of a mammography database.
While Virginia state officials said there is no evidence that personal information was stolen by hackers who accessed a computer system that collects data on approximately 8.3 million patients, the State Police and the FBI have launched a formal investigation into the matter.
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The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.