Thursday, May 16, 2013

More IRS-Health Record Problems?

Health Care IT News: "IRS faces class action lawsuit over theft of 60 million medical records"

 Scott Gottleib (Forbes): "The IRS Is Accessing Your Health Records. You Trust Them?"

Also from Gottleib: "Suit Alleges IRS Improperly Seized 60 Million Personal Medical Records"

In the second piece, Gottleib quotes from the complaint:
“These medical records contained intimate and private information of more than 10,000,000 Americans, information that by its nature includes information about treatment for any kind of medical concern, including psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual or drug treatment, and a wide range of medical matters covering the most intimate and private of concerns,” the complaint states.

“Despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant, defendants threatened to ‘rip’ the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over,” the complaint reads.
(Of course, the validity of these complaints presumably still needs to be established in court.)