New data spill shows risk of online health records

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By JORDAN ROBERTSON

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Until recently, medical files belonging to nearly 300,000 Californians sat unsecured on the Internet for the entire world to see.

There were insurance forms, Social Security numbers and doctors' notes. Among the files were summaries that spelled out, in painstaking detail, a trucker's crushed fingers, a maintenance worker's broken ribs and one man's bout with sexual dysfunction.

At a time of mounting computer hacking threats, the incident offers an alarming glimpse at privacy risks as the nation moves steadily into an era in which every American's sensitive medical information will be digitized.

Electronic records can lower costs, cut bureaucracy and ultimately save lives. The government is offering bonuses to early adopters and threatening penalties and cuts in payments to medical providers who refuse to change.

Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20110821/D9P8MNBG0.html

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In this June 30, 2011 photo, Aaron Titus, chief privacy officer and vice president of business development at Identity Finder, an Internet company that develops software to find and protect sensitive data, works at his office in New York. Electronic records can lower costs, cut bureaucracy and ultimately save lives. But at a time of mounting computer hacking threats, the risk of data breaches are of major concern. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

[Archaic]

1. This continues until the downside risk is too high

If the worst that will happen is a fine, and it's lower than the cost of the gear and the staff you need to secure that data, there is no deterrent.

My company stares down seven figure fines if we lose pollution data. So we have three different backup methods.

When fidelity left my social security number in a spreadsheet on a laptop that was stolen from the car of some low level nobody, they only had to buy me a year of credit monitoring. The fines and regulations against financial/medical firms are obviously not high enough.

[McCamy Taylor]

2. Hackers recently stole my husband's PIN and a Visa Card No. If they can hack Chase

you know they can break through the local hospital---and information is money. Soon, they will be able to direct market the prescription drugs online straight to the people that might take them.

[2banon]

3. The Horses already left that Barn a long time ago..

unfortunately, currently there are a number of hospitals, medical clinics, health care providers, EMT's etc that send records of claims, RA's, (remittance advice) EOB's (explanation of benefits) invoices, diagnostic charts/descriptions and all manner of paperwork containing personal and detailed patient information that are outsourced to 3rd parties for digitizing document content vis a vis document scanning, or data entry which requires scanned documents to be sent to places such as the philipines (or elsewhere, domestically and internationally) for data entry purposes. All supposedly done meeting currernt HIPAA rules and regs. very narrow requirements apparently.