14 DAY TRIAL // The data stored by health care centers is known to benefit from weak protection, but last week, the medical information of Rob Ford, mayor of Toronto, has been accessed without authorization for a second time in the month of October.
The first incident occurred at the Mount Sinai Hospital, where Ford was receiving treatment for liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer.
Changing the hospital leads to another privacy breach
After the disclosure of the breach, the mayor of Toronto switched the medical facility for Humber River Hospital, where his health information was again pried into by unauthorized individuals.
As far as the second privacy breach is concerned, the hospital's president and CEO, Rueben Devlin, did not mention if the staff members were responsible, but said that disciplinary measures were taken against certain individuals.
Rob Ford has said that even if more pressing matters are to be tended to, health records should not be accessed by unauthorized persons.
In the case of the Mount Sinai Hospital, two staff members were found responsible, none of them being involved in the care of the mayor.
Public figures are all the more prone to attacks of this kind because often times insiders are hoping to get a big check by selling the info to newspapers or other publications. This shows the importance of placing security locks on medical details.
Hospitals need better patient data security policy
This was an inside job, and getting access to the health data was seemingly easier because of that. However, in a study carried out this month by CSID, a company that provides data breach solutions, it has been revealed that health care entities in the US are not too concerned about losing information about their patients.
The research showed that employees with access to medical records also have access to their personal email, creating a door for compromising the systems of the health care organization.
According to the Toronto Sun, Humber River spokesman Gerard Power said that the mayor was notified on October 22 about the breach by the hospital’s CEO Rueben Devlin, who indicated “that these actions were not consistent with the hospital’s values.”
On the other hand, there are no details about the measures taken to enforce better security of patients’ info, except for disciplinary actions.
Rob Ford is no longer running to be re-elected as mayor of Toronto this year and instead aims at the counsellor seat, which he occupied for about a decade before being elected mayor in 2010.