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Recycled Medical Records Used As Scrap Paper At Elementary School
Parents with students at Hale Elementary School in Minneapolis have found something interesting on the back of their children's pictures hanging on the fridge, detailed medical information. From the article: "Jennifer Kane was tidying her dining room when she found the drawing by her daughter, Keely, who goes to Hale Elementary School. On the back of the paper was the name, birth date and detailed medical information for a 24-year-old St. Paul woman named Paula White. 'The more I read it, the more alarmed I became about the amount of information I had about this person,' said Kane." The security lapse has been blamed on a paralegal donating the paper to the school.
Look in the source code of this comment for detailed medical records!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There's got to be a massive fine coming for this.
The man who dies rich dies disgraced. -- Andrew Carnegie
"Mommy, whats 'anal hemorrhoids'?"
I am sure the school carefully checked over the scrap paper being donated. Some teacher probably got a box full of paper, took a quick look and was just thankful her funding-starved school got some paper. Otherwise, she'd have had to buy some out of her own paycheck like many teachers do...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Someone should be fired immediately. And was there no one at the school that noticed this?
School teachers are not responsible for HIPAA compliance ;-)
Good going! Would HIPPA be violated, or lawyer client privileged be violated in this case?
Probably both, ouch...
But now it's passed to 3rd parties AND 3rd graders!
Three decades ago when I was in high school, they loaded our PDP-8's line printer with the the back sides of boring inventory reports from some manufacturing company.
However, now that we don't manufacturer anything in the USA any more, and our entire economy is becoming nothing more than a mix of healthcare providers and consumers, they *have* to use old health records for printer paper in schools. There's nothing else to use.
I can tell you exactly what happened. There were two boxes next to the copier, one which was for the "special needs" children in school, and the other for materials to be shredded. Someone dumped some papers with PII into the "special need" children box when they should have gone into the shred box. Then, more documents without PII were dumped into the "special need" children box. When the school came calling for paper as they do once a month, the paralegal grabbed the "special need" children box and gave it to the school, giving the documents a cursory glance.
More than likely, the arrogant lawyer who will just dump his papers wherever because he's too busy to actually pay attention is the culprit. The poor paralegal will get the shaft, the "special need" children box will get removed, and we will all move on feeling wiser - except the "special need" children, who no longer will get paper either with or without PII.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Yep. I'm a public university professor, and I regularly have to make copies on the back of once-used paper because we run out of money for paper. I've also been told I need to buy my own printer if I want access to a printer. I'm also being asked to pay for my own inter-library loan articles. Some of our faculty offices have holes in the wall large enough to stick your hand outside and check the weather. (I can't believe I'm not making that one up. But, yep, just looked out window to verify: Prof. Z's office has a fist-sized hole all the way thru the wall; the boards have just rotted away.) Money is getting tight. Unless it's for a new football stadium, which I can see from my window is coming along nicely. (Note to parents: DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN GET A GRADUATE DEGREE IN HISTORY, ENGLISH, GEOGRAPHY, OR ANY OF THE HUMANITIES!)
We've bought a few advanced projectors on mobile cats...
At my school we had mobile projector cats, too. It was hard to keep those little monsters still through an entire lecture, though. Especially when the teacher pulled out the laser pointer.
Health records can contain personally identifying information (like SSN/DOB/address) which can be used for ID theft. (As an ID theft victim, trust me when I say this is *NOT* fun to clean up after.) Also, potentially embarrassing information could be revealed that was trusted to remain between doctor and patient. Working in IT in a medical organization, I can attest to the power HIPAA has over our actions. We need to keep it in mind with everything we do. People get fired for violations like looking up someone's records that they didn't have a job-related need to do. It's not a warning not to do it again with repeat offenders getting the boot. It's strike one and you're out. There will be an investigation and people will be fired.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Oh bother. This is a law firm which deals with private information as a business. It's what they do. Every peon (non-lawyer) should always assume that every document is private, and that disclosure could lose them their jobs. They should be told this, but they should also be able to figure it out on their own.
Now there are scenarios (ex:asking permission) where someone else would be at fault. In the general case, though, the paralegal is squarely at fault. I don't want to hire a lawyer who employs that paralegal... thus one can hardly blame the law firm for not wanting to employ him/her any further.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.