Hey, there! Log in / Register
Mass. General to pay $1 million fine for losing patient records on the T
By adamg on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 5:53pm
CommonHealth reports on the fine for the "potential violation" of a federal patient-privacy law caused when an employee lost 40 to 50 patient records on the T in 2009.
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Good thing Mass General has a
Good thing Mass General has a million dollars lying around to pay the fine. Maybe they have gold coins piled up in a room, like Scrooge McDuck. I expect the top administrators spend Friday afternoons diving into piles of gold coins.
Yeah, that's great for health reform
Let's make a hospital pay a million (expletive) dollars for losing patient records. Ooh, somebody might find out that some guy they don't know has cancer or the clap (or both.) Yeah, that will cost somebody one million dollars in damages.
Where do people come up with this crap?
Serious
Or maybe someone's record is found by somebody who knows him or her. Or contains information that could be used to embarrass or blackmail someone. And whatever information those records contain is now gone - and could be very important. This situation is very serious and should be treated seriously.
Also, I'm wondering if MGH's insurance can cover this. I'm assuming so.
One way to keep costs up
The fine seems exorbitant. That being said, the missing forms and the information they contained are probably some of the worst to have this happen to. I have to wonder, in view of the size of the fine, if this is a repeating type of incident. I wonder how many heads rolled.
To whom is this fine paid?
To whom is this fine paid? What is this money used for?
Back to OCR
The fines are (in theory) supposed to be paid to the HHS Office of Civil Rights to support the increased investigation and enforcement called for in the HITECH Act.