...yet been determined. Excellus joins fellow BCBS members Anthem [TTA 11 Feb], soon to be merging with Cigna, with 80 million; Premera Blue Cross [TTA 24 Mar] with 11 million, Care First with a ‘bag o’ shells’ 1.1. million [TTA 2 June]. The pattern has been such that the national Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) announced in July that it will offer all 106 million of its members identity protection starting next January. (Note for our mathematicians: Anthem has millions of non-BCBS members) Chinese hackers are suspected in the Anthem breach. FierceHealthPayer broke the story, in this Editor’s estimation,... Continue Reading
Search Results for identity theft
Extent, cost of health ID theft exposed in Wall Street Journal
...a healthcare equivalent of the FCBA, especially as healthcare organizations receive Federal funding. For healthcare providers, it would provide a bully incentive to tighten their security–as credit cards and banks did–because it would severely limit payment collections (the ‘hounding’) from the victims of fraudulent billing. How Identity Theft Sticks You With Hospital Bills Unfortunately the WSJ has chosen to paywall this article, but if you search on the title you can generally find the content either reprinted or in a WSJ preview. Previously in TTA: our many articles on hackermania, healthcare related identity theft (Harry Lime Lives!) and data security... Continue Reading
UCLA Health data breach may affect 4.5 million patients
...could have started as early as September 2014. Yet the UCLA Health statement equivocates: “At this time, there is no evidence that the attacker actually accessed or acquired individuals’ personal or medical information. Because UCLA Health cannot conclusively rule out the possibility that the attackers may have accessed this information, however, individuals whose information was stored on the affected parts of the network are in the process of being notified.” The usual remedy of a year of identity theft services is on offer, which seems to be the requisite Bandage for Breaches. Where is that ounce of prevention? Also FierceHealthIT.... Continue Reading
Breaking news confirmed: Bosch exiting healthcare and telehealth in US–UPDATED
...would likely have put them into an uncomfortable position in a Government bid. The fate of ViTel Net, owned by but marketing separately from Bosch via its own website and system identity (with no visible ties to the ownership) is unknown, but presumed to be independent. For those Grizzled Pioneers and others in the Telehealth Wars, it’s a mixture of regret in seeing a major player with a long history depart the scene (in Early Days, you had to admire the sheer scrappiness of Health Hero) and schadenfreude (see above re patents). We empathize with their employees and wish them... Continue Reading
Healthcare vulnerability in a concatenation of data breaches
Concatenation is one of those lovely English words that express far more than its simpler synonyms: sequence, series or chain of events. Perhaps we have experienced that concatenation of data breaches which connect and demonstrate a critical mass that motivate healthcare organizations, including insurers, to ensure that data security and privacy gets primacy in HIT. Our Readers know we’ve been on the case since 2010; we’ve been noting Ponemon Institute and ID Experts studies since then. While simple, straightforward theft can be the cause of smaller breaches and not part of a Big Hack, it’s not as Three Stooges or... Continue Reading
10th Anniversary Article 1: The Next Ten Years of Telecare
...almost encourage identity fraud. I wont bother considering the reputations of estate agents, politicians, insurance companies, PPI claim lawyers or conventional banks. So who is left? I suspect that most people trust the good old NHS, their local authority, housing associations, charities (and some not-for-profit organisations), as well as those who already take charge of our data whether in national databases (CSC, Orion etc) or in GP record systems (TPP and EMIS, for example). Perhaps organisations will have to be clear about who they are, who their directors are, and what they will and wont do with our data in... Continue Reading
58 percent of health data breaches due to simple theft, not hacking: JAMA
Laurie Orlov Well, the JAMA report would be great, if it weren't incorrect. 80 million Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield records (name, address, social security number) stolen in just the past six months, resulting in a lifelong effort to protect stolen identity, fraudulent tax returns ($50 billion reviewed false refunds, and that's just what the IRS admits.) Anthem, it turns out, also shared data with all of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield companies, one way or another. so even if you weren't one of the 80 million, you could have your identity stolen and a tax refund filed on your social... Continue Reading
Data breaches top 120 million since 2009 (US)
...EMRs to speak with EHRs, Meaningful Use, new care and payment models, 30-day readmissions and ‘oh, by the way, how will we get paid?’ The Premera Blue Cross (Washington state) breach of 11 million records was the second largest in healthcare history (after Anthem Health‘s February bunker buster of a breach). Most breaches are from stolen laptops or shared/easy to guess passwords (or none at all)–but these have not been in the millions. Premera’s theft took place on 5 May 2014 and was only discovered in January; it included SSIs, bank information, claims data, patient name/address and date of birth.... Continue Reading
Hackermania running wild, 2015 edition
...warning that they are being targeted by “…malicious actors targeting healthcare related systems, perhaps for the purpose of obtaining Protected Healthcare Information (PHI) and/or Personally Identifiable Information (PII),” and that “These actors have also been seen targeting multiple companies in the healthcare and medical device industry typically targeting valuable intellectual property, such as medical device and equipment development data.”[TTA 22 Aug 14] (We wonder if the FBI is investigating the sundry breaches and backdoors of Healthcare.gov, embarrassingly closer to home.) And in October, we reviewed ‘the sheer screaming attractiveness of medical ID theft’ likening it to the 1949 Vienna of... Continue Reading
Short-shorts for an autumn Friday
...Segment: Individual; Age: Female Older; Language: EN; CervCancer3yr: N; CervCancer5yr: Y; Mammogram: N; Colonoscopy: N”. Ooops!…Another day, not quite another breakthrough for Mount Sinai Hospital here in NY, which had your typical laptop theft compromising over 10,000 records but fortunately not SSI or insurance information….More alarming were the malware/hacker attacks. In North Carolina, Central Dermatology of Chapel Hill was compromised by malware in a key server. And further south, Jessie Trice Community Health Center of Miami, Florida was hacked by a criminal identity theft operation accessing personal data of almost 8,000 patients. iHealthBeat, also Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, NY Times (Anthem)... Continue Reading
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