Re: Medical Records--SOLD on eBay!

[Guest guest]

I just keep them... Here at the office or at home... Last one to come out was slowly dying anyway in my old laptop so what's the big deal keeping a small credit card sized drive in a small fire and water resistant safe? And if for some odd reason I actually NEED something off of it, I might be able to throw it in a portable case and access that old data... Can't be any worse than keeping our portable back-up drives in the same safe or taking the off-site one home with me every night.

Yes I agree with the old stupid people are the cause of the majority of breaches. I try to never go to the supermarket on the way home while I have my laptop and back-up drive on me... It seems most of these breaches are exactly that. Stolen from people's cars while shopping somewhere or otherwise in a public lot or space.... How stupid can you be about thousands of people's PHI or credit histories??? Amazing truly amazing...

To: Sent: Thu, March 31, 2011 2:09:07 PMSubject: Re: Medical Records--SOLD on eBay!

>> When I continue to read about stolen laptops from hospitals, some> right out of employees' cars, I wonder how many of these laptops> have been sold on eBay.These hospital IT depts should be fired if they had protectedinformation without encryption.> But if she filed a complaint then the bad news: The Health Information> Technology for Clinical Health Act of 2009 increased the possible fine> to $1.5 million for every patient data breach.Is that to fund Obama Care?> I can now understand why my mom--a retired psychiatrist--shredded> boxes of patient psychiatric files in her living room before burying the> stuff in the backyard. Even I routinely shred

confidential information> for my garden. Earthworms love old medical records.Recycling medical notes?> But now I have electronic records. Since upgrading my laptop to a MacBook> Pro, I wonder how to discard medical files on my previous two laptops.> I've been told by computer geeks that it's impossible to reliabiy eradicate> data from hard drives. The ultimate method for hard drive disposal> recommended by the Department of Defense (pg 142, section 4) is> complete physical destruction after overwriting and degaussing.Nonsense.You can download software from the internet .. that reliably wipeshard drives. You might be able to recover something .. but you'd haveto be a forensic expert to do so.The way it is done is to write over each sector with 0s .. and notjust once, but multiple times.> So to protect my patients I'll be heading out to Home

Depot for my> protective gear and sledgehammer for a weekend of pounding hard> drives before smelting or pulverizing them.>> I may be going overboard. I'm not sure.Yes, you are.> But I'm thinking it's better to buy new $89 hard drives before selling old laptops on eBay than get slapped with a 1.5 million dollar per-patient penalty.>>>> So what do you guys do with old drives?Keep them. I never sell my drives.-- Graham Chiuhttp://www.compkarori.co.nz:8090/Synapse - the use from anywhere EMR.