Boston Hospital Faxed Patients’ Info to Bank

For the past six months, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston has been accidentally faxing the confidential medical records of women who’d recently given birth to a Boston investment bank, regardless of the bank’s repeated attempts to stop them, the Boston Herald reports.

Almost every week for the last half-year, the bank has received, by fax, as many as four women’s records from Brigham and Women’s, the Herald reports.

The data was billing information.

The bank, which asked to remain unidentified, has received records on some 30 patients.

According to the Herald, the records contain a wide array of information on the women, including Social Security numbers, birth dates, home address, blood types, occupations–even the results of exams for sexually transmitted diseases.

“There is absolutely no reason why this should be coming to us,” Amy Spurling, a bank finance manager, told the Herald. “This is very personal information that is being sent out.”

The news comes just days after two Massachusetts newspapers announced, strangely enough, a similar data leak.  For more information, read Two Mass. Newspapers Expose CC Data.

For more on the highly-publicized ChoicePoint data breach, read ChoicePoint to Pay $15B for Data Breach and The Never-Ending ChoicePoint Story.

Also, listen to our Reaction to the Gigantic ChoicePoint Penalties podcast with Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

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