Health Information

May 12, 2024admin

Influence of COVID-19 on trust in routine immunization, health information sources and pandemic preparedness in 23 countries in 2023

The emergence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 virus in late 2019 precipitated a global health emergency that contributed to more than 7 million reported deaths globally as of 19 January 2024 (ref. ¹) and an estimated 18.2 million excess deaths between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021 (ref. ²). The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, requiring urgent international intervention, led to an accelerated pace of research and development of multiple safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines, which were first authorized for emergency use in December 2020³. The expeditious vaccine development and limited availability resulted in serious challenges in the equitable global distribution of vaccines, coupled with vaccine-related misinformation and mistrust of the science behind vaccine safety⁴.

Vaccine hesitancy⁵, pandemic fatigue⁶ and vaccine fatigue, defined as the ‘inertia or inaction toward vaccine information or instruction due to perceived burden and burnout’⁷, continue to present challenges to vaccine uptake in 2023. Although COVID-19 has been deprioritized as a substantial public health threat since 2023, the virus strains continue to circulate and, in some settings, lead to new increases in hospitalization and intensive care unit admission¹. The potential impact of vaccine hesitancy on confidence in booster doses remains substantial⁸. In addition, documented spillover effects on routine immunization pose a threat for the reemergence of some childhood and adult vaccine-preventable diseases^9,10.

In this Brief Communication, the fourth study in a series of annual global surveys across 23 countries (Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Türkiye, the United Kingdom and the United States)^11,12,13, we report perspectives of adults in the general public on COVID-19 and

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Health Information

May 11, 2024admin

Data privacy an ongoing issue in midst of pregnancy, period tracking

‘With so much sensitive information online about our health, habits, and lives, we need to stay vigilant about bad actors trying to get their hands on it’ – Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

NEWS RELEASE

GOVERNOR GRETCHEN WHITMER

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Amid a national conversation on pregnancy and period tracking, Governor Gretchen Whitmer reminded Michiganders to check their health apps and be mindful of any data that is shared with app developers and third parties. She also urged residents, particularly those attending college out of state in places that restrict access to abortion, to check Attorney General Dana Nessel’s consumer alerts on private health and location data. 

“Every Michigander deserves privacy and control over their own health information,” said Governor Whitmer. “With so much sensitive information online about our health, habits, and lives, we need to stay vigilant about bad actors trying to get their hands on it. Without adequate protections, our data could be used to go after women seeking reproductive health care, their friends and family, and to prosecute nurses and doctors for doing their jobs. Here in Michigan, we are going to protect people’s data and their reproductive freedom. I urge Michiganders to check their health apps, especially if they live in a state with restrictions on abortion and contraception.”

“Protecting a person’s rights to bodily autonomy and privacy in their medical decisions go hand in hand,” said Attorney General Nessel. “While Michiganders overwhelmingly supported reproductive freedom in 2022, the outlook nationally following the fall of Roe remains largely unknown. That is why even here in Michigan, it’s critical that residents read the fine print in the user agreements for applications and programs pertaining to their private health information. Oftentimes, registration through these platforms gives companies the right to sell personal information to other companies and organizations,

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Health Information

May 10, 2024admin

Health-care workers pulled out of Thessalon First Nation following privacy breach

‘It was honestly shocking’: Maamwesying North Shore Community Health Services informed patients that a nurse with the First Nation accessed personal health information without authorization

Maamwesying North Shore Community Health Services pulled all of its health-care workers out of Thessalon First Nation last month following a privacy breach involving unauthorized access to patients’ personal health records.

A letter from the Indigenous health-care provider was sent to patients who had been impacted by the privacy breach this past March. Although it remains unclear exactly how many people were affected by the breach, sources tell SooToday it’s believed that more than 20 people who received health-care services in Thessalon First Nation had their personal health information compromised when a staff member with the First Nation accessed their files.

Approximately 113 people live in Thessalon First Nation, according to recent statistics from Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.

“Please be reassured that there is no indication your personal health information (meaning your diagnoses, test results, clinical notes, address or contact information) was shared with anyone else,” said the letter. “The community staff member has confirmed that no copies were made and that your health record was not altered or removed from the building.”

The letter also indicated the staff member no longer had access to Maamwesying’s electronic medical record, and that the health-care provider was reviewing its privacy policies, providing mandatory privacy re-training for employees and community partners, and posting privacy information in its waiting room to ensure patients know their privacy rights.

“In the future, we will continue to focus on ongoing staff and community privacy training as a priority,” said the letter. “We will also continue privacy audits of our electronic medical records system to ensure we are notified of any unusual activity in patient files.”

Maamwesying did not respond to

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Health Information

May 9, 2024admin

Workplace dysfunction behind complaint, privacy commissioner finds

Breach at centre of complaint ‘would never have arisen’ if coworkers were getting along, says Graham Steele

A privacy breach involving a Department of Health employee could have been avoided if it weren’t for tensions in the workplace, said Graham Steele, Nunavut’s information and privacy commissioner.

In a decision published April 29, Steele found there was a privacy breach when information about an employee’s personal life was shared with coworkers.

Steele was investigating a complaint from a Health Department employee who submitted a leave request via email in February with some personal information and other details related to the request.

The decision does not name the complainant, the employees involved, or which community the complaint originated from, in order to protect the privacy of those involved.

The complainant returned from leave and learned their personal information related to the leave request had been shared with a co-worker and passed on to others.

Steele said during his investigation he found “simmering tension” in the workplace between employees and management. He remarked in his decision that he worried he was being “drawn unwillingly into a wider workplace dispute.”

“It’s never comfortable when you get a situation of employees complaining about a manager or employees complaining about each other,” Steele said in an interview.

“There is a danger that privacy legislation will be used as just another arrow for people within a GN workplace to shoot at each other, and that is not, in my view, what privacy legislation is meant to accomplish.”

It’s not Steele’s role to recommend employment discipline, except in the most serious cases; he said it’s up to GN internally to decide how it wants to remedy the situation.

Steele did not list any formal recommendations in his report.

“No matter what I decide, it will not resolve the

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Health Information

May 7, 2024admin

Connect Care now in more sites, programs across Alberta

Connect Care aims to bring staff and physicians at healthcare sites onto a common provincial information system.

Alberta Health Services completed its eighth launch of Connect Care, which aims to bring staff and physicians at healthcare sites, including two Covenant Health sites in Central Zone, onto a common provincial information system.

The Connect Care initiative supports best practices across AHS, and enables health records from AHS and its subsidiaries and partners to be accessed through one system. It also provides clinicians with common decision-making support, AHS said in a media release on Saturday.

“Each Connect Care launch brings more front-line healthcare workers, physicians and patients together to give healthcare teams a more complete health history for patients, access to consistent information on best practices and resources at their fingertips, while improving our ability to keep information private and secure,” said Athana Mentzelopoulos, AHS president and CEO.

“Healthcare teams can also communicate with patients and each other more easily.”

The eighth launch of Connect Care involves all five AHS zone across 129 towns and cities in Alberta. There are now more than 118,400 staff, physicians and other healthcare providers using Connect Care.

There will be a total of nine Connect Care launches. The launches started in November 2019 and will continue to the final implementation in fall 2024. When fully in place, approximately 125,000 staff and physicians will be using Connect Care at 682 sites across Alberta.

Albertans who have visited a site where Connect Care is in place can access MyAHS Connect, an online patient portal where people can see their health information, test results and medications, manage appointments, and communicate securely with their AHS healthcare team.

The new Connect Care facilities transitioned to the new information system at 5 a.m. Saturday.

“Connect Care helps AHS physicians and other healthcare

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Health Information

May 5, 2024admin

Empowering Injured Workers with Mobile Access to Vital Health Information

PHILADELPHIA, April 30, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Perspecta, the leading provider of provider directories and provider data management for workers’ compensation, government, and healthcare, proudly unveils its latest innovation: My Workers’ Compensation ID (My WC ID), a mobile app that serves as a powerful enhancement to our Health Ticket platform. Designed to empower workers’ compensation insurance companies and enhance the experience of injured workers, My WC ID redefines the landscape of claims management by offering injured workers unparalleled access to vital health information via their mobile devices.

Built as an integral component of our comprehensive Health Ticket platform, My WC ID seamlessly integrates with existing workflows, offering a streamlined solution that enhances efficiency and improves outcomes for workers’ comp insurance companies and their clients.

Key Features of My Workers’ Compensation ID include:

Centralized Access: My WC ID provides insurance companies with a centralized platform to efficiently manage and deliver vital information to injured workers, ensuring seamless access to critical information.
Real-time Updates: With My WC ID, insurance companies can instantly update important claim information, Pharmacy information, physician forms, scheduled services, and physician contact details, ensuring injured workers always have the most up-to-date and accurate information at their fingertips.
Enhanced Communication: The application facilitates seamless communication between insurance companies, injured workers, and healthcare providers, fostering transparency and collaboration throughout the claims process.
Customizable Solutions: My WC ID allows insurance companies to tailor to their unique requirements, allowing them to adapt the platform to their specific workflows, claim communications, and preferences.

“At Perspecta, we understand the challenges faced by workers’ compensation insurance companies in delivering timely and accurate health information to injured workers,” stated Howard Koenig, CEO of Perspecta. “With the launch of My Workers’ Compensation ID, we are empowering insurance providers with a transformative solution

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Health Information

May 4, 2024admin

A Season Of Health Breaches, A Season Of Changes

The recent hack of Change Healthcare underlines the critical need for systemic enhancements in … [+] cybersecurity and urgent reforms to safeguard sensitive data across the industry.

getty

As spring ushers in a season of transformation, the healthcare sector finds itself at a crossroads, compelled to evolve rapidly in response to a series of recent, high-profile cyberattacks. One of the most significant incidents is the hack of Change Healthcare, a pivotal player in the U.S. healthcare system and a subsidiary of UnitedHealth. This organization, responsible for processing insurance and billing for hundreds of thousands of hospitals, pharmacies, and medical practices, holds sensitive health information on nearly half of all Americans. The breach profoundly impacted major entities like UnitedHealth, Walgreens, and CVS, carrying hefty financial repercussions and deeply affecting patient health. This incident underlines the critical need for systemic enhancements in cybersecurity and urgent reforms to safeguard sensitive data across the industry.

“Change” Was Changed

Following a cyberattack on February 21, UnitedHealth’s Change Healthcare continues to process over $14 billion of backlogged claims. UnitedHealth Group announced expectations for major clearinghouses to resume operations after a month-long effort to recover services that were disrupted nationwide, prompting a federal investigation. While critical services at Change Healthcare have been restored, UnitedHealth is cooperating with a HIPAA compliance investigation initiated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Addressing these issues will occupy Change Healthcare for the foreseeable future.

The outage, caused by a cyberattack from the ransomware gang known as ‘Blackcat,’ disrupted prescription deliveries and affected pharmacies across the country for multiple days. The breach continues to be investigated. Despite a recent crackdown on Blackcat, which included seizing its websites and decrypting keys, the hacker gang struck major businesses prior to this event and continues to threaten retaliation against critical infrastructure and

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Health Information

May 3, 2024admin

Looking for Reliable Health Info?

Before the internet, it wasn’t easy to find health information. Books were an option or you might have found pamphlets about a medical condition in the waiting room at the doctors’ office.

Of course, you could ask the doctor. Talking with your health care team remains the gold standard when you need guidance, but the additional options for self-guided education in the form of online health information have exploded over the last 20 years.

If only all of it was trustworthy, valid and vetted by medical experts.

Last month, in an article published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Medical News, a public health expert at Purdue University said consumers should use caution, especially when social media sites, like TikTok and X, serve up new content from unfamiliar accounts. The info might not be true and the account’s content could be generated by a bot or artificial intelligence rather than a human being, said Laura Schwab-Reese, MA, PhD, an associate professor at Purdue University’s Department of Public Health. These health-related social media posts also could be a ploy to get you to buy something.

“If the platforms are showing you what to watch or read, you don’t know who is producing the content or why,” Schwab-Reese said.

For people managing rare diseases, the search for reliable medical information has an added dimension of difficulty. There are fewer authoritative sources for rare conditions and less is known because they haven’t been researched as thoroughly. Here are five steps that can steer you toward high-quality health information:

Visit the websites of patient advocacy organizations, including the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) and EURORDIS, which serves rare disease patients in Europe. Find links to patient organizations here for these conditions:
Hemophilia A

Hemophilia B

von Willebrand Disease

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Health Information

May 2, 2024admin

Critics question Ontario watchdog’s decision to keep health-care worker shortage data confidential

A team leader nurse gets updates from another nurse while they treat patients inside the intensive care unit of Humber River Hospital in Toronto, on April 20, 2021.CARLOS OSORIO/Reuters

Health care stakeholders and an expert on privacy are criticizing a recent ruling that allows the government of Ontario to keep details of the province’s shortages of nurses, personal support workers and doctors confidential.

Alec Fadel, an adjudicator at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, was ruling on a bid by journalists at Global News to obtain human-resources data from the Ministry of Health through a freedom of information request.

Mr. Fadel acknowledged in his decision, released April 16, that there is “compelling public interest” in disclosing the figures. But he said this did not outweigh the Ministry of Health’s concerns that releasing detailed data could have a negative impact on the province’s ability to negotiate with doctors, nurses or private staffing agencies.

The Global News journalists will not seek a judicial review of the decision, they said.

Critics decried Mr. Fadel’s decision, saying he had relied too heavily on the government’s claim that making those figures public would be harmful to its relations with health professionals or private staffing agencies.

“This ruling is wrong-headed. The rationale for it really just doesn’t hold water. And I think it’s a dangerous ruling for Ontario,” Natalie Mehra, executive director of the non-profit Ontario Health Coalition, said in an interview.

She alluded to recent closings of emergency rooms, birthing units and outpatient labs in the province. “There couldn’t be a more pressing public interest than to know the data about the extent of the staffing shortages and whether or not the staffing plans of the government are adequate.”

Ms. Mehra also noted that the

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Health Information

May 1, 2024admin

Privacy breach ‘absolutely terrifying’ – Winnipeg Free Press

Two Winnipeg residents who were notified a health worker snooped on their medical records — among a string of recent privacy breaches in the province — are demanding the system be made more transparent and accountable.

Daniel Hidalgo and Shontise McFadyen received identical letters from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority in December, alerting them an employee had inappropriately viewed their personal health records dozens of times.

The pair are colleagues at CommUNITY204, a non-profit organization founded by Hidalgo to serve Winnipeg’s homeless population.

According to the letters, viewed by the Free Press, the privacy breach was identified during a routine audit earlier that month.

“It’s absolutely terrifying because all you can think is there must be some kind of spiteful or malicious intent behind it,” Hidalgo said.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
Daniel Hidalgo, whose personal medical information was breached last year, is calling for more transparency in the health-care system. — MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS

Daniel Hidalgo, whose personal medical information was breached last year, is calling for more transparency in the health-care system.

“I immediately responded. I needed to know who this was and if this could be somebody who knows me personally. I wanted to know what they accessed, how long they had access — are there cameras showing them taking photos of these records or were they printed?”

Records provided to Hidalgo by WRHA officials and shared with the Free Press show the woman accused of snooping had allegedly done so 19 times over a period of about nine months.

Hidalgo has met the woman on several occasions through his advocacy work. He believes she may have been working in public health, but does not know why she would look at his personal records.

The health authority refused to confirm the woman’s official job title or whether she is still employed in the region Tuesday.

“The WRHA cannot discuss personal information regarding employees,” a spokesperson said in an email.

Collectively,

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Category: Health Information

“Change” Was Changed