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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – While much of the public’s attention has focused on massive cyber attacks and the hacking of health insurance databases, the damage done in these mass breaches has been mostly hypothetical, with much information exposed but little exploited.
Instead, it’s often the little-noticed smaller-scale violations of medical privacy — the ones that affect only one or two people — that inflict the most harm,ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein writes. <script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://pixel.propublica.org/pixel.js” async=”true”></script>
Key takeaways from his report today with NPR:
- Driven by personal animus, jealousy or a desire for retribution, small breaches involving sensitive health data are spurring disputes and legal battles across the country. But even when small privacy violations have real consequences, the federal Office for Civil Rights rarely punishes health care providers for them.
- Health providers are required to notify OCR within 60 days of breaches affecting at least 500 people and also must share details with the media and contact those personally affected. Rarely do small privacy breaches get anywhere near the same attention, except when they involve celebrities or high-profile individuals.
- Since 2009, OCR has received information about 1,400 large breaches. During the same time, more than 181,000 breaches affecting fewer than 500 individuals have been reported.
Read the full story here: https://www.propublica.org/
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