There have been many recent and public events involving security breaches of electronic medical records and other patient data in hospitals. The unfortunate event in Tucson, Arizona where a Congresswoman was shot, led to the firing of three curious clinical support staff members for improperly accessing EMRs at  the University Medical Center where the Congresswoman was being treated. In Iowa, five total hospital employees were disciplined (three fired) for violating federal law by viewing the medical records of hospitalized University of Iowa Hawkeye football players.

Beyond curiosity, one would think that people want to access medical records information from newsworthy people and events to try and sell the stories to the media who obviously would pay large sums of money to be the first to break the story about something like Michael Jackson’s medical past. But, then I wonder why a Las Vegas man, would go through the trouble of organizing a patient records scheme where he used private hospital files to solicit business and clients for a personal injury attorney. He obviously has some decent planning skills and would be better off in Wall Street, where schemes such as this go largely unnoticed, and can go on for quite some time.

Outlining preventative steps such as Dr. Chaiken’s will help reduce the risk of security breaches as the mHealth market continues to grow, and physicians adopt mobile devices as a convenient way to help deliver efficient and accurate patient care.