The Boston Globe‘s Liz Kowalczyk tells the story of how one of the paper’s staff photographers stumbled upon a massive medical privacy breach while dumping his trash.
Photo by D’Arcy Norman via Flickr
As Tinker Ready points out on Boston Health News, it’s a reminder that stories are everywhere … and shredders are not. Kowalcyzyk traced the documents to a billing intermediary.
Kowalcyzk uses the landfill scene to demonstrate just how difficult it is for hospital officials to keep confidential information from slipping through the cracks.
The photographer said he saw health and insurance records from at least four hospitals and their pathology groups — Milford, Holyoke, Carney, and Milton — mostly dated 2009. The Globe notified the hospitals. It is unclear how many other hospitals’ records might have been discarded in the dump.
