Health Data Management Magazine's May issue notes that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) posted 47 breach of unsecured protected health information in the United States between September 22, 2009 and February 15, 2010.
The criteria for posting is at least 500 individuals must be affected. In one case, 500,000 people were affected. The actual list is here. As of today there were seven more breaches posted.
Unfortunately the information on the list is very disappointing. There are no details of any significance about the breaches. For example, here is the latest one on the list (as of 4/26/10):
Tomah Memorial Hospital
State: Wisconsin
Approx. # of Individuals Affected: 600
Date of Breach: 3/19/10
Type of Breach: Other
Location of Breached Information: Other
While creating this "wall of shame" has some value, posting more details would surely be more valuable to all health care provider security practitioners.
