Health Information Management

More than 6,000 UCSF patients' information available online

HIPAA Weekly Advisor, May 12, 2008

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Information about more than 6,000 of University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) patients was available on the Internet for more than three months in 2007, according to a May 2 article in the San Francisco Chronicle. The breach was discovered October 9, 2007, but UCSF did not notify patients until April 2008.

 

The information was accessible if patients were searched for by name. Data included names, addresses, and treatment locations, along with some medical record numbers, according to the article.

 

Data was posted online as a result of fundraising activities. UCSF shared patient information with its business associate, Target America, which mines electronic databases for potential or existing donors, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

 

HIPAA permits the sharing certain types of PHI, not including health information, for fundraising purposes. PHI included in the data posted online may have included treatment locations, which could reveal health information about a patient. In this case, patients received treatment in chest and pulmonary, vascular surgery, pediatric surgery, and pediatric multiple sclerosis units, according to the article.

 

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