A data theft at an outside medical billing company has led to about 2,200 people treated at various University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) emergency departments being notified that their records may have been illegally disclosed by an employee of Medical Management LLC (MML). MML and its affiliates provide billing services to healthcare providers throughout the United States, including to UPMC’s physician group Emergency Resource Management.  

Almost 90,000 patients have been notified that their data may have been compromised after a former New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. employee improperly accessed and transmitted files containing protected health information.

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, which serves the Washington, D.C., area, has reported a hack into a database containing 1.1 million customer records.

Wearable fitness-monitoring devices are not only motivating Americans to exercise more. When combined with providers’ use of wearable computers and cloud-based storage, they’re also pushing the healthcare system to ask whether HIPAA lines are being crossed.

This week in health IT a report found a disturbing change regarding data breaches. 

Theft of a laptop and two hard drives from the car of an Indiana State Medical Association administrator is the source of a data breach impacting 39,090 members of its group health and life insurance plans.

BOSTON—When Union Hospital was going to implement a new EMR, the organization took advantage of the opportunity to also implement an infrastructure with greater information security. CIO Anne Lara, EdD, RN, CNE, CPHIMS, shared the hospital's experience during a presentation at Medical Informatics World. 

BOSTON—If you apply privacy and security policies and procedures inconsistently, you will create problems, according to Lassaad Fridhi, information privacy and security officer for Commonwealth Care Alliance, speaking at Medical Informatics World.