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Stanford Hospital Contractor Leaks 20, 000 Patient Records to Public Website
From: InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2011 02:59:08 -0500 (CDT)
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Stanford-Hospital-Contractor-Leaks-20000-Patient-Records-to-Public-Website-642765/ By Fahmida Y. Rashid eWEEK.com 2011-09-08A data privacy breach at Stanford University's hospital has resulted in medical records for 20,000 emergency room patients being posted on a public Website for nearly a year, according to The New York Times.
A patient notified the hospital of the breach Aug. 22, and the hospital has been investigating how a detailed spreadsheet containing sensitive patient information wound up being posted on a commercial site, The New York Times reported Sept. 8. The compromised information belonged to patients who went to Stanford Hospital's emergency room over a six-month period in 2009.
The records included names, diagnosis codes, account numbers, dates of admission and discharge, and billing charges. Social Security numbers, birth dates, credit card accounts or other information that could potentially result in identity theft was not exposed. Even so, the hospital is offering free identity-protection services to all affected patients.
“It is clearly disturbing when this information gets public,” Diane Meyer, Stanford Hospital's chief privacy officer, told the Times, adding, “It is our intent 100 percent of the time to keep this information confidential and private, and we work hard every day to ensure that."
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