If after the Healthcare.gov debacle, there’s still any confidence that centralized Federal systems are secure and trustworthy, please read this HealthcareITNews tally of the multiple data breaches and HIPAA violations taking place at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). From 2010 through May 2013, VA department employees or contractors were responsible for 14,215 privacy breaches affecting more than 101,000 veterans across 167 VA facilities, including incidences of identity theft, stealing veteran prescriptions, Facebook posts concerning veterans’ body parts, and failing to encrypt data, a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review investigation revealed. The two-month investigation by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published this weekend found... Continue Reading
Search Results for identity theft
Data insecurity in Obamacare insurance exchanges (US)
...points mean open windows for hackers and data thieves to crawl into–and profit from. We at TTA have been following healthcare-related data breaches and medical identity theft issues for at least two years, with our latest two months ago here on the exploding black market. When medical records’ black market value is estimated at an average of $50 per record–94 percent of health care organizations have had at least one breach in the past two years–and 2 million Americans were medical identity theft victims in 2011–it’s one unpleasant ‘pointer to the future.’ This Editor will let the latest mass media... Continue Reading
Doctor disciplined for using Skype for telemedicine consults
...better example was highlighted at the Epic EHR User Conference last week with Stanford (University) Hospital and Clinics. Epic has developed a software add-in for video consults which integrates three ways: 1) with the patient’s EHR, 2) with scheduling and keeping the appointments into the physician workflow and 3) with third-party identity verification services. The ease of use demonstrated in the Epic video is a real pointer to the future. An earlier telemedicine test was done with Stanford Dermatology and the Cisco HealthPresence platform. InformationWeek, ScienceRoll. Previously in TTA: Telemedicine in the TIME Swampland, HealthSpot, Netsmart ally for telemedicine kiosks... Continue Reading
Medical identity theft hits new highs
August ended with the report of the second highest-ever identity breach traced to a healthcare provider–4 million patient names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and clinical information, contained on four unencrypted Advocate Health System (Illinois) office computers. It was a ‘behemoth breach’ in Healthcare IT News‘ words and has led to the filing of a class-action lawsuit (Privacy Rights Clearinghouse). Now security consultant Ponemon Institute’s latest report, released yesterday, increases the breach anxiety level with its 2013 Survey on Medical Identity Theft: 1.84 million people in the US are currently affected by medical identity theft–and there were 313,000... Continue Reading
How best to help older people to understand the benefit of technology? (UK)
...one that guarantees to detect a problem like a fall or a flood quickly, and then delivers a rapid response so avoid a long lie and the long term issues that might arise. In fact, it would only be the fully comprehensive policy that provides the response, the basic policy only does the detection bit - a bit like third party, fire and theft I guess. Without such a policy, there would be no detection, no response and and no right to an ambulance or paramedic service. That would never do, think about all those people being denied a pretty... Continue Reading
The exploding black market in healthcare data
When medical records’ black market value is estimated at an average of $50 per record–94 percent of health care organizations have had at least one breach in the past two years–and 2 million Americans were medical identity theft victims in 2011–it’s one unpleasant ‘pointer to the future.’ [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/IDExperts_Infographic_v4_72-crop1.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]Data firm ID Experts studied a decade of data breaches and notes that medical data has become very attractive to professional hackers and cyber thieves. ID Experts’ full infographic. First, there is so much of it with the increasing electronification of health data. Second, so much of it resides on... Continue Reading
VA networks breached from overseas; 20 million records affected (US)
Department of Veterans Affairs IT systems have been breached since 2010 by eight ‘nation-state-sponsored organizations’, affecting records of 20 million veterans, according to recent testimony in hearings held earlier this month by the House Veterans Affairs Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. While the normal ‘hack’ is due to theft or an inside job for financial gain, these likely have a far more sinister nature. According to former VA Chief Information Security Officer Jerry Davis (now at NASA), the attacks continue from these countries, and according to Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Coffman, may include China and Russia. Testimony and evidence also revealed that... Continue Reading
Healthcare data breaches show 25% fraud risk: study
...hospitals and large providers. HCA Holdings, the largest US for-profit hospital chain, is testing Eye Controls’ system at their private clinics in London. Medical ID theft is also a problem in the UK, with ‘shame-based theft’ (to conceal an illness) and private billing the given reasons. Iris scanning units cost about $200-300–a moderate cost. According to the World Privacy Forum, iris scanning will rule out hacking, but not ‘inside jobs’–progress of a sort. But an open question is how this integrates into current EHRs. Iris Scans Seen Shrinking $7 Billion Medical Data Breach (Bloomberg) Editor’s note: The Gimlet Eye is…envious.... Continue Reading
The amazing lightness of Google’s Being There vs The Private Eye
...questions about what this privacy could mean for people’s ability to protect their identity, to protect their reputation, to protect themselves against governments. But you don’t offer a whole lot of solutions… And then the interview veers off into fields of peat, ‘unearthing challenges’ and ‘fostering debate’ about how to handle the 57 percent of people in autocracy (and it’s not a world governed by General Motors where everyone has a Corvette or a Monte Carlo SS) coming online. Glub. But back to the 43 percent. Why should there be privacy solutions when Google is dedicated to being a Good... Continue Reading
Aetna introduces Healthagen brand for health tech, ACO businesses
...invested to acquire and build the Healthagen businesses. New titles as well: Emerging Businesses CEO Charles E. Saunders, M.D., is now Healthagen CEO; in addition, Nancy Ham recently joined Medicity as CEO. As a ‘pointer to the future,’ it indicates that this insurer is willing to establish a separate brand and division that represents connecting, not siloing, services and tech that benefit both providers and consumers–and to keep the identity fairly, but not wholly, separate from Aetna. They also did not let a good coined name they own go to waste. Aetna press release Related reading: Neil Versel in InformationWeekHealthcare... Continue Reading
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