Two recent surveys show that the Healthcare industry still has a long way to go in complying with new HIPAA security requirements.  The 2009 HIMSS Security Survey found that one third of respondents had at least one known case of medical identity theft, yet only 50% have a plan in place to respond to data breaches.

The City of Detroit admitted to two healthcare-related breaches this week. 

In one incident, a thief broke into a vehicle of a health department employee in October, snatching a flash drive with information from birth certificates…

The employee had backed up information on her flash drive because information was being transferred between computers at work.

The data appears to have been unencrypted.  The city has offered a year’s worth of credit monitoring to anyone who was affected.

Data Security, Healthcare, Portable Storage