Las Vegas Information Breach

by James Lawson

A few of weeks ago I was out in Las Vegas attending the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) show and happened to see a news story about a pretty serious violation occurring at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada (UMC). It seems as if these types of news stories are happening more and more frequently. Recently I’ve had ample material to cite when talking to sites about information protection because of all of these examples from different healthcare institutions.

This one is pretty serious and could end up costing this institution plenty in financial terms as well as their reputation. The case centers around patient information that appears to have been leaked to local attorneys with the intent of soliciting business.  Here is the video news story from KVBC in Las Vegas. In doing some more research on this I also found another article about the same event with more detail published in the Las Vegas Review Journal. This article also has some great general information about HIPAA and the new penalties that this hospital and others may be facing.

One piece that I found really interesting was the quote at the end of this article about UMC currently not being able to provide a meaningful report to patients about access to their records. Based on my knowledge of the market, I’d bet that many other healthcare institutions are in the same boat and very much exposed to the same type of breach.

Are you working at one of those facilities? Or maybe worse, have you been a patient at a facility where a breach has occurred? Do you wonder if someone out there might have your medical data, financial data, or more? I certainly do.