massive data news from FierceHealthIT

While it's not clear what happened, it looks as though clinical and personal data on 130,000-odd WellPoint beneficiaries may have been accessed through the web. WellPoint has announced that during Read more...

Now this must be a little embarrassing for officials at NIH. As it turns out, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) was one of 3,000 patients involved in a cardiac MRI study whose records were possibly lost when a Read more...

In what is unfortunately an all-too-predictable episode, UCLA Medical Center executives have said that they're investigating 13 staff members who seem to have accessed Britney Spears' medical Read more...

In what is unfortunately an all-too-predictable episode, UCLA Medical Center executives have said that they're investigating 13 staff members who seem to have accessed Britney Spears' medical records Read more...

California has enacted sweeping changes to an existing data-privacy law which specifies that residents must be notified if their electronic health data or health insurance information is breached. Read more...

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is recovering this week from a public relations storm which blew up when it was discovered that patient-specific information was online and freely available. The data, which included information on 80 patients, was first posted online in 2005, when a faculty member made a presentation on integrating multimedia into medical records. As part of the presentation, the now ex-faculty member had posted screen shots of the e-radiology …

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It was a near miss this past week for a unit of WellPoint, one of the largest insurers in the United States. Early last week, WellPoint's Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield announced that it had lost medical and personal data on 75,000 members. The data had been lost when an unencrypted CD was sent to mental health benefits manager Magellan Behavioral Services by Health Data Management Solutions, and lost in transit somehow. As part of its public mea culpa, Empire had announced …

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Data on 2,200 patients treated at a Rhode Island hospital was posted on the public website last week, catching hospital officials off guard. Patients seen at Westerly (RI) Hospital found out about the problem when a woman searching for her phone number with Google stumbled across the a link for the site, which includes patient names, Social Security numbers and medical records. Officials don't know how long the data was live online, or who put it there. Once they discovered …

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Another week, another health system data loss. This week the prize goes to Austin's Seton Healthcare Network, which lost personal information on 7,800 patients last week when a thief stole a laptop from a secured building. The data pertains to patients who visited a Seton ER or clinic since July 2005. The laptop's hard drive doesn't contain any clinical information, but a Seton spokesperson admitted that there could be Social Security numbers or Medicaid numbers on the drive. The thief …

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While it's tempting to just say that security breaches happen, we at FierceHealthIT are beginning to be a bit knocked back by the volume of major health organization data losses taking place over the past six months. The latest came early last week, when the VA said that it had lost track of data on 1.8 million veterans and doctors. That includes billing information on about 1.3 million doctors nationwide, and Social Security numbers on about 535,000 individuals. The data, which …

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