All these breaches can’t be accidental. This information is being gathered somewhere. I’ve been following breaches for over a year, and there’s probably fewer people in the U.S. whose data hasn’t been breached than has.

DAILY BRIEFING
February 12, 2007

The hard drive that went missing from a Birmingham, Ala., Veterans Affairs Department facility last month contained highly sensitive information on nearly all U.S. physicians and medical data for about 535,000 VA patients, agency officials announced over the weekend.

The data for the 1.3 million physicians who have billed Medicaid and Medicare, both living and deceased, could result in widespread fraud, such as the creation of fake Medicare and Medicaid invoices.

There are 902,053 physicians in the United States, according to the American Medical Association.

According to congressional sources, personal information on patients and medical data were kept in separate files, but there is enough information that files could be linked.

A VA research assistant was using the physician data to analyze VA health care providers and compare them to non-VA providers, according to a statement from the department. The research assistant used the hard drive to back up information contained on an office computer, and the data is not believed to have been encrypted.

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