VA OIG reports patient data at risk with vendor

Robinson+Cole Data Privacy + Security Insider
Contact

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Inspector General recently issued a report, following a complaint that the VA Palo Alto Health Care System put veterans’ health information at risk when it allowed personnel of a vendor to have access to VA patient information without appropriate background investigations or appropriate privacy and security awareness training. According to the report, “the Chief of Informatics…failed to ensure [vendor’s] personnel met the appropriate background investigation requirements before granting access to VA patient information. The Chief of Informatics also failed to ensure [vendor] personnel completed VA’s security and privacy awareness training.” Finally, the report found that the ISOs failed to develop system security documentation and perform a system risk analysis prior to allowing the vendor to place its software on the VA servers.

Therefore, the OIG concluded that these actions “potentially jeopardized the confidentiality of veterans’ PII, PHI, and other sensitive information

[View source.]

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

© Robinson+Cole Data Privacy + Security Insider | Attorney Advertising

Written by:

Robinson+Cole Data Privacy + Security Insider
Contact
more
less

Robinson+Cole Data Privacy + Security Insider on:

Reporters on Deadline

"My best business intelligence, in one easy email…"

Your first step to building a free, personalized, morning email brief covering pertinent authors and topics on JD Supra:
*By using the service, you signify your acceptance of JD Supra's Privacy Policy.
Custom Email Digest
- hide
- hide