VA leads nation in privacy breaches
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has some explaining to do. From 2010 through May of this year, the organization's employees or contractors were responsible for more than 14,000 privacy breaches.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review conducted a two-month investigation that found that the 14,215 included everything from theft of veterans' identities and prescriptions to Facebook posts that included photos of veterans' body parts. The breaches affected 101,018 veterans and 551 VA employees.
According to the Tribune-Review, the VA's early adoption of EHRs gave employees easy access to health and financial records. The department lacks accountability, with only one in 365 privacy violations being reported to VA's Office of Inspector General; has poor safeguards in place; and fails to encrypt computer data, according to the investigation.
The VA "places the highest priority upon safeguarding the personal information" of veterans and uses technology to protect their records, according to a statement from VA spokesperson Genevieve Billia. She added that VA takes privacy breaches "very seriously and has established strict guidelines that go beyond what is required by law."
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.