Examples of Privacy Breaches

Contrary to what you might think, most information security and confidentiality breaches are NOT due to criminal intent. In general, most are due to carelessness, sometimes even due to good intentions. Please read through the following examples:

1. You are standing in line in the cafeteria when a colleague walks past. The colleague is a person knowledgeable about a treatment you are using with a patient, so it is a good opportunity to discuss questions you have regarding this treatment. You begin discussing your patient’s treatment in this very public place. This is a clear breach of confidentiality…even if a patient's name is never mentioned.
2. You loan a computer disk to a person in another office, forgetting that there is information on the disk which details a personnel problem you are having with a colleague. Even if the person to whom you have loaned the disk does not access the file, information security and confidentiality has been breached by not appropriately labeling and storing the sensitive information.
3. At a party in your neighborhood, someone mentions that a famous entertainment personality is in the Medical Center for tests. They share the fact that this person smokes, which is surprising given his public support of a nationwide non-smoking campaign. To share the patient’s name is the first breach of confidentiality. To share the patient’s health information is the second breach of confidentiality.
4. As you are emptying a recycle trash bin, you notice some information about an employee who is about to be terminated due to scandalous circumstances. You stop to read the information about this termination process. The person who "threw away" this information should have taken greater care in destroying highly sensitive information. This is the first breach of information security and confidentiality. However, just because information is thrown away, does not mean it is available for reading. This is the second breach of information security and confidentiality.