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Long Term Care & Senior Living Blog

We offer updates on national on regional issues such as malpractice defense, regulatory compliance, labor and employment issues and estate planning.

Long Term Care & Senior Living Blog
August 25, 2014

Happy HIPAA Monday -  Stolen Laptop + No Encryption = Provider Data Breach

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA reported a stolen employee laptop containing patient protected health information as well as social security numbers and other personal information of at least 500 patients. While the hospital has encryption policies, this laptop lacked encryption after a recent operating system upgrade. The hospital will mail letters this week to potentially affected patients and has notified all relevant regulatory agencies, but the situation underlines the importance of adequately protected patient information.

Long Term Care & Senior Living Blog
June 10, 2014

PHI + Home Computers = Possible Breach

Hershey Medical Center announced that it will notify 1,801 patients of a data breach. This privacy breach arose out of an employee’s action, which involved taking data home on a removable storage device to work on a personal computer at home after hours. The employee then used his personal email to send updated data to doctors at the medical center. Because the employee worked with the data on devices and systems without the safeguards and controls of the workplace, the medical center could not rule out the possibility of unauthorized access of the information. While Hershey Medical Center did not believe an unauthorized person accessed the information, it felt it needed to notify the patients.