String of errors made Stanford patient data public
Filed under: Health data, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline, Public records
In The New York Times, Kevin Sack traces the series of errors and lapses in judgement that led to a large-scale data breach at Stanford Hospital, one which went unnoticed for almost a year. Sack’s lead paragraph neatly encapsulates the whole story.
Private medical data for nearly 20,000 emergency room patients at California’s prestigious Stanford Hospital were exposed to public view for nearly a year because a billing contractor’s marketing agent sent the electronic spreadsheet to a job prospect as part of a skills test, the hospital and contractors confirmed this week. The applicant then sought help by unwittingly posting the confidential data on a tutoring Web site.
Since 2009, when federal law began requiring disclosure of medical data breaches involving more than 500 people, Sack reports that about 330 incidents have been reported on an HHS website. A CSV file of the data is available.
HIPAA’s role in transplant story, correction
Filed under: Health journalism, Hospitals, Public records
The Village Voice says things are rather tense at the New York Post after it incorrectly reported on Monday that an alleged killer received a liver transplant at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Frederik Joelving of Reuters Health reported on Tuesday that the hospital denied the transplant had taken place there.
Cover of Monday's New York Post.
That was followed by a correction in the Post on Wednesday morning. The original story is no longer available on the Post’s site but is available through Google’s cache.
According to the Village Voice, which quotes unnamed sources in the Post newsroom, “Rupert Murdoch was so enthralled with the story when it ran, that he called Post editor-in-chief Col Allan to personally congratulate him on it.” It also says the tip for the story came from Allan.
Because of the Post’s story, the hospital eventually had to deny that Johnny Concepcion, accused of killing his wife, received a transplant there after eating rat poison in a suicide attempt. Hospital comments on whether a patient has been treated are fairly unusual as hospitals try not to run afoul of the privacy rules outlines in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
In fact, the Post’s correction says the hospital declined to comment before it published the original story, citing HIPAA, but that “Curiously, the hospital now sees itself free to publicly discuss Concepcion’s case.”
Speaking of HIPAA, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press recently released “FERPA, HIPAA & DPPA: How federal privacy laws affect newsgathering,” a guide to federal privacy protection laws.
The section on HIPAA explains the history of the privacy rules, the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information, and discusses how it has been misunderstood and misused to keep information from reporters. AHCJ President Charles Ornstein, a senior reporter at ProPublica, is quoted extensively and offers examples of its misapplication. The piece also outlines what the law does allow.
-
Join us in Atlanta
for Health Journalism 2012
Fellowship applications
due Feb. 27
New at HealthJournalism.org
- Data gives depth to investigation of patient safety
- What reporters should know about Alzheimer’s and related dementias
- Apply for fellowships to attend Health Journalism 2012
- AHCJ asks Supreme Court to permit broadcast of arguments in health reform case
- Tips for print, online journalists to embrace broadcast opportunities
- Numbers reveal how often, or how rarely, states check doctors’ disciplinary records
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
