HHS posts 36 big health care breaches

Nothing is secret in the federal government, especially not the problems. The Department of Health and Human Services began posting on its website this week a list of organizations that have notified HHS about breaches of unsecured health information affecting more than 500 individuals.

The list of 36 major breaches of healthcare information between September 2009 and January included problems involving group practices, hospitals, state agencies and insurers. The reported cases included the usual panoply of thefts of laptops, computers, CDs, the loss of backup tapes and mailing errors.

The biggest case reported so far involved more than 500,000 individuals when hard drives were stolen from BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee.

For more on health IT breaches:
- see this HealthcareInfoSecurity.com article

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