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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Employees and contractors at VA medical centers, clinics, pharmacies and benefit centers commit thousands of privacy violations each year and have racked up more than 10,000 such incidents since 2011, a ProPublica analysis of VA data shows.
The breaches range from inadvertent mistakes, such as sending documents or prescriptions to the wrong people, to employees’ intentional snooping and theft of data. Not all concern medical treatment; some involve data on benefits and compensation, Charles Ornstein writes.
Key takeaways:
- The VA’s Sunshine Healthcare Network, which includes Florida, Puerto Rico and southern Georgia, has had more privacy incidents than any other region, with at least 370 over the past five years. The C.W. Bill Young VA Medical Center in Bay Pines, Florida, had more privacy reports than any other facility, with 112 incidents.
- The Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Health and Human Services has cited the VA for privacy violations more frequently than any other health provider in the nation, yet it has not sanctioned the VA or publicly identified it as the top HIPAA violator.
- As the VA’s overall problems have mounted — including long waits for care — some whistleblowers contend that HIPAA has been used against them. Some have reported being accused of violating HIPAA for collecting material to inform members of Congress about care problems at the VA; others say their own medical records were looked at by coworkers and officials without their consent.
Read the full story here: https://www.propublica.org/
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