3 Responses for “What the Recent Data Breach Says About the State of Health IT”

The privacy of medical records is an essential component of the workers' compensation system. As the use of electronic records becomes more commonplace the need to maintain the records in a secure format becomes increasingly critical.  Today's post was shared by The Health Care Blog and comes from thehealthcareblog.com By David Do, MD

Earlier this month officials at Oregon Health Sciences University discovered that residents in several departments were storing patient information on Google Drive, and had been doing so for the past two years. Given They treated this discovery as a breach of privacy and notified 3000 patients about the incident.

While I don’t condone the storage of patient information on unapproved services like Gmail or Google Drive, this incident pretty much highlights the sorry state of information systems within the hospital and the unfulfilled need by physicians for tools that facilitate workflow and patient care.

It says something that the Oregon residents felt compelled to take such a drastic action. I don’t know what punishment – if any – those responsible were given by administrators for their “crimes.” I’ll leave it to readers to make up their own minds about the wisdom of the unauthorized workaround and the appropriateness of any punishment. But I do know that the message the incident sends is a very clear one.

We’re screwing this up. There is really no earthly reason why it should be any more difficult to share a patient record than it is to share a Word doc, a Powerpoint or yes, even a cloud-based Google Drive spreadsheet.

Why the Breach Happened
What’s going on here? Let’s say I admit a patient to the hospital.  Our friend was hospitalized here just last month, and like many patients, he has dementia...

[Click here to see the rest of this article]

Related articles

• 3 Responses for "What the Recent Data Breach Says About the State of Health IT" (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Medicare To Punish 2,225 Hospitals For Excess Readmissions (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• Specialty Compounding, LLC Issues Nationwide Voluntary Recall (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• HHS Inspector General Scrutinizes Medicare Observation Care Policy (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
• South Lakeland nurse killed himself after being wrongly accused of inappropriate contact with patient, inquest hears (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

Specialty Compounding, LLC Issues Nationwide Voluntary Recall

Specialty Compounding, LLC Issues Nationwide Voluntary Recall of All

Lots of Unexpired Sterile Products Due to Reports of Adverse Events

Specialty Compounding, LLC, a subsidiary of Peoples Pharmacy Inc., is voluntarily recalling all lots of sterile medications within expiry.

The recall was initiated after reports of bacterial infection affecting 15 patients at two Texas hospitals, Corpus Christi Medical Center Doctors Regional and Corpus Christi Medical Center Bay Area, whose treatment included IV infusions of calcium gluconate from Specialty Compounding. There is a potential association between the infections and the medication at this time.

If there is microbial contamination in products intended to be sterile, patients are at risk of serious infections which may be life threatening.

“Because of the potential association between the hospital-based infections and sterile compounded medications produced by Specialty Compounding, we are voluntarily recalling all sterile products out of an abundance of caution,” said Ray Solano, R.Ph., pharmacist in charge at Specialty Compounding. “We deeply regret the impact this recall has on our patients and the hospitals that we serve, but patient safety must always be our first concern.”

Witnesses present divergent settlement figures in Garlock estimation trial

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Heckman

Attorneys representing claimants suing Garlock Sealing Technologies for asbestos exposure presented a second consultant who estimated the company would need to devote $1,293 billion to a trust to settle pending and future claims against the company, a figure a Nobel prize winning economist testified was unreliable because of what he said was questionable methodology Friday.

Francine Rabinovitz, president of Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Associates, said she relied on the past five years of asbestos litigation data to come up with the figure. A Garlock consultant previously testified the company would need to devote a significantly less amount – $270 million. Rabinovitz said she arrived at her figure by estimating the size of the population exposed to asbestos, the proportions of persons exposed to asbestos who develop mesothelioma, and the cost of defending asbestos claims among other factors.

Rabinovitz’s figure comes close to the estimate of Mark Peterson, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in social psychology who does estimations for trusts and was also called to offer his estimation in court by claimant attorneys. Peterson came up with a figure of $1.365 billion to cover liability Garlock would likely face from people who have pending claims against the company and future claimants who will develop cases of mesothelioma in the coming years.

Highly hazardous pesticides should be phased out in developing countries

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.fao.org

The tragic incident in Bihar, India, where 23 school children died after eating a school meal contaminated with monocrotophos, is an important reminder to speed up the withdrawal of highly hazardous pesticides from markets in developing countries, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today.

Monocrotophos is an organophosphorus pesticide that is considered highly hazardous by FAO and the World Health Organization. Experience in many developing countries shows that the distribution and use of such highly toxic products very often poses a serious risk to human health and the environment.

The incident in Bihar underscores that secure storage of pesticide products and safe disposal of empty pesticide containers are risk reduction measures which are just as crucial as more prominent field-oriented steps like wearing proper protective masks and clothing.

The entire distribution and disposal cycle for highly hazardous pesticides carries significant risks. Safeguards are difficult to ensure in many  countries.

N.Y. AG announces $600,000 agreement with masonry contractor

Employer fraud continues to be a major problem. NY State has enforced workers' compensation laws actively. Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Eric Schneiderman

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Thursday an agreement with a masonry contractor and its owners for allegedly underpaying masonry workers on a publicly funded senior housing facility project.

Masonry Services Inc. and its owners, James Herrera and Jaime Herrera, allegedly paid masonry workers between $8 and $23 an hour for work on the St. Marks Project, far below the applicable prevailing wage rates.

MSI also allegedly failed to pay overtime to workers despite the workers regularly working more than 40 hours per week.

“My office will continue to pursue contractors who illegally underpay workers, whether it’s on a small scale or in a larger settlement like this one,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “Contractors who work on publicly-funded affordable housing projects must comply with all applicable laws, plain and simple. MSI will be held accountable for failing to meet its obligations to hard-working New Yorkers, in addition to paying back the wages owed to its workers.”

Plaintiffs’ expert says lead paint abatement could cost $1.4 billion

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Kleinberg

Research director Dr. David Jacobs of the National Center for Healthy Housing and an authority in abatement procedures testified for plaintiffs Thursday that the cost of a lead paint abatement program could exceed $1.4 billion in the 10 California jurisdictions pursuing a “public nuisance” case against paint manufacturers.

The trial taking place in Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg’s court is now into its fourth week. The case is expected to continue next week when plaintiffs introduce their last witness and defendants take the stand to argue that no public health threat exists, and that for what little exposure does exist in California, lead paint is not the primary source.

The plaintiffs, including Los Angeles and Santa Clara Counties and the cities of San Diego and San Francisco, are asking one time lead paint and pigment manufacturers to pay for the abatement costs of eliminating lead paint from homes to protect public health. Defendants NL Industries, the Sherwin-Williams Company, ConAgra Grocery Products, DuPont and Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), claim the suit is without merit, that blood lead levels in California are close to zero and that other exposures, such as gasoline, are more likely to elevate blood lead levels than lead paint.

South Lakeland nurse killed himself after being wrongly accused of inappropriate contact with patient, inquest hears

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk

Suicide: South Lakeland nurse killed himself after being wrongly accused of inappropriate contact with patient, inquest hears

10:21am Friday 12th July 2013 in News

A NURSE was found hanged at his South Lakeland home after being wrongly accused of inapporpriate contact with a female patient, an inquest heard.

Christopher Milnes, 50, was fully exonerated but at the hearing his family hit out at Morecambe Bay NHS Trust for taking so long to inform him he was in the clear.

The false claim was made while Mr Milnes was working at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary in May 2012.

He was found dead at home in Chestnut Close, Holme, near Milnthorpe, on December 16.
A pathologist gave the cause of death as hanging and found no alcohol, drugs or underlying health conditions.