Tag Archives: medical records

Massachusetts Attorney General Secures $140,000 Settlement of Claims that Patient Information Was Left in a Town Dump

The Massachusetts Attorney General announced today that the former owners of a medical billing practice and four pathology groups have agreed to collectively pay $140,000 to settle allegations that medical records and patient billing information for “tens of thousands of Massachusetts patients were improperly disposed of at a public dump.”  Under the settlements, the defendants have agreed to pay a total of $140,000 for civil penalties, attorney fees,… More

Pulling Out Your Hair Over Wrongfully Disclosed Records?

A recent Massachusetts case shows that even prisoners have a right to privacy in their medical records. In this case, Alexander v. Clark, Suffolk Superior Court, Civil Action No. 0905456-H 28 Mass. L. Rptr. No. 14, 291 (May 30, 2011), the court sided with the claim of a prisoner that her health information had been wrongfully disclosed. In particular, the prisoner, Christine Alexander, sued several correction officials because those officials had sent documents regarding her “request for Propecia for hair loss”… More

Gone Baby Gone: More Massachusetts Medical Records Go Missing

Following on the heels of the discovery of hospital records in a town garbage dump, today’s Boston Globe reported that  "computer files that possibly contained personal information on about 800,000 people connected to South Shore Hospital are ‘unrecoverable.’"  However, the investigation into this breach determined that there was a low of harm risk to those individuals whose records were lost, given that the tapes in question "would require specialized equipment and software to read the information." … More

Another Day, Another Celebrity’s Hospital Record Breached

It seems an inevitable consequence of modern celebrity: when you go to the hospital, hospital workers will look at your records (even though they have no medical reason to). The latest example of this involved the infamous mother of octuplets, Nadya Suleman. It resulted in the firing of 15 hospital workers at Kaiser Permanente’s hospital in Bellflower, California. All these violations have been reported by Kaiser to the California Department of Public Health. … More