Patient Privacy Violation
According to the reports, a former Wayne Memorial nurse’s aide reportedly accessed 390 individuals’ records. The hospital believe that the data was not used maliciously or inappropriately.
Affected information includes Social Security numbers, diagnoses and insurance information. Patients who may have had their Social Security numbers accessed will be offered a free one-year membership in a credit monitoring service, according to the hospital.
CEO David Hoff mentioned that the employee was terminated, and that the incident had been reported to the police.
“This incident has prompted us to further review all levels of employee access to patient medical records, to enhance our HIPAA training for all employees and to research software programs that might help us better detect unauthorized access,” Hoff explained.
Hoff added that Wayne Memorial “is considering expanding restrictions for particular groups of employees.”
“Wayne Memorial Hospital was one of the first in the region to implement electronic medical records, which help reduce the potential for human error and often accelerate diagnosis and treatment,”said Hoff. “We have been ahead of the technology curve, and I can assure you that we will do all that we can to make sure something like this does not happen again.”
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