Comments (0) Another mailing label SNAFU:
Envelopes sent to thousands of Californians who get benefits from the Department of Health Care Services contained Social Security numbers on the mailing labels.
The department said Monday the mailings went to 49,352 people receiving adult day health care benefits.
Read more on KCRA.
The Gainesville Sun reports that AvMed Health Plans announced that personal information of some current and former subscribers may have been compromised by the theft of two company laptops from its corporate offices in Gainesville on Dec. 11.
The information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers and protected health information, according to an AvMed news release.
“The theft was immediately reported to local authorities but attempts to locate the laptops have been unsuccessful,” according to the news release. “On December 23, 2009, AvMed determined that the data on one of the laptops may not have been protected properly, and approximately 80,000 of AvMed’s current subscribers and their dependents may be affected. An additional approximate 128,000 former subscribers and their dependents, dating back to April 2003, may also have been affected.”
Read more in The Gainesville Sun.
A copy of AvMed’s release does not appear to be available on their web site at the time this entry was filed.
Dom Nicastro reports:
HHS’ “harm threshold” standard in its interim final rule on breach notification will prevent healthcare organizations from overwhelming patients with unnecessary breach notification responses, according to providers who work with privacy and security.
At the 18th annual National HIPAA Summit Friday, Judi Hofman, CAP, CHP, CHSS, privacy/information security officer for Cascade Healthcare Community at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, OR, and Debbie Mikels, corporate manager, confidentiality for Partners Healthcare System in Boston, said the provision published August 24 in the Federal Register gives covered entities the power to prevent unnecessary notifications.
“If you flood your patients with huge concerns, you’re going to open up a floodgate of problems in your organization where you really may not have had a risk to start with,” Hofman said.
Read the full coverage on Health Media Leaders.
The EMR and HIPAA Blog points out that CMS has made the comments on meaningful use public on the Regulations.gov site.
The Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) announced today an error has lead to potential online exposure of personal information provided by clients and applicants of the Wyoming Kid Care CHIP program.
WDH Information Technology was notified Thursday that personal information of Kid Care clients was improperly appearing in Google search results. Thirty seconds upon receiving the call, Information Technology shut down the web site involved. The files that were being searched by the search engine have also been removed from the web site.
“I want to make it crystal clear that NO health record information was compromised by this error,” said Dr. Brent Sherard, Wyoming Department of Health director and state health officer. “However, personal information such as address information and children’s social security numbers provided by clients and applicants of the Wyoming Kid Care CHIP program may have been exposed.”
Lee Clabots, Wyoming Department of Health deputy director for administration, said “We are still investigating exactly what happened and do not yet have all the answers. However, we do know the problem was not caused by intentional wrongdoing.”
WDH provided automated recorded calls to about 5,000 affected families this afternoon with an initial notice about the situation. Each family will also be receiving detailed letters in the coming days.
The department is contracting with Debix, an identity protection service, to offer free help to affected families. “This company’s services will offer additional security to families to help ensure the children’s information is not stolen or improperly used,” Clabots said. Affected families will be asked to contact Debix at 877-676-0371 beginning Saturday morning.
Sherard said, “While we believe at this point the potential harm was minimal, this is a situation we are taking very seriously. My staff is working diligently to ensure this does not happen again.”
Source: Wyoming Department of Health
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