Health Information Management

E-prescribing pilot suspended after data breach

HIPAA Weekly Advisor, July 31, 2006

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Washington, DC-based Georgetown University Hospital (GUH) suspended an electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) pilot in response to the leaking of patient information, Wired News reports.

A consultant working on a separate project was able to access information for up to 23,000 Georgetown patients by logging onto servers owned by InstantDX, LLC, an e-prescribing firm in Gaithersburg, MD. GUH had previously communicated the information securely to InstantDX as part of the trial.

However, an Indiana-based consultant configuring a laptop for a physician office stumbled onto an Internet address, login name, and password that allowed him to download files containing patient data. This information included patient names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth.

Click here to read the Wired News article.



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