Center for Disability Rights (CDR) suffered potential data breach when protected health information (PHI) of individuals with disabilities was allegedly stolen.
An employee of Angels in Your Home, a home care agency serving individuals with disabilities in New York, allegedly stole patient information to take with him to a new home care agency. As per the report Angels’former CEO Marco Altieri, obtained permission from individuals to take their PHI. CDR maintains that this was done fraudulently and without their knowledge.
CDR did not mentioned the specification of health and other personal information disclosed in the breach. But stated that misuse of PHI, including names and contact information of clients was done.
CDR came to know about the incident after being contacted by one of its clients. CDR also states that there is potential to pursue fraud charges.
“Second, giving false pretenses, misrepresenting information, or lying to an individual in order to convince them to switch providers is fraud,”Darling stated. “In the case of using fraud to convince an individual to switch services paid by Medicaid, it is also Medicaid Fraud and consumer fraud.”
CDR is taking legal action related to this incident.
“Every party involved in this appalling situation has secured legal representation, except for the individuals whose protected health information has been compromised, misused, or stolen,”CDR’s Director of Advocacy Stephanie Woodward said in a statement. “We’re committed to assisting the people who have been impacted the most by this breach
Center for Disability Rights suffers data breach
- disabled people and their workers.”
This is a very personal situation for CDR, according to Darling, because the organization is run by individuals with disabilities.
“Because we are run by people with disabilities, our organizations take the duty to protect personal information of disabled people and their attendants very seriously. Misuse of such information feels personal –because it is,”he says. “No one should experience this, but because we have disabilities we are most at risk for this to occur. And frankly, this has been a growing trend locally that must stop.”
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