WILKES-BARRE — The Geisinger Health System could get hit with a hefty fine because a doctor at Geisinger Wyoming Valley used e-mail to send patient information to his home computer, a possible violation of strict federal health privacy rules that took effect this year.
On Monday, Geisinger announced that it notified 2,928 patients that on or about Nov. 3, protected health information was e-mailed to a home account of a former Geisinger gastroenterologist. The information included, patient names, Geisinger medical records, procedure, indications and the physician’s brief impressions regarding the care provided.
“It was a limited amount of information that was sent, and it did not include Social Security numbers, phone numbers or addresses,” said Geisinger spokeswoman Marcy Marshall on Tuesday.
None of the patients are from Northumberland, Snyder, Montour or Union counties, Marshall said.
Marshall would not provide the name of the doctor and said she couldn’t disclose any other information except that the physician left Geisinger on Dec. 1. Rachel Seeger, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said an investigation will get under way when the department confirms the incident.
“After we make sure this happened, and we speak to everyone, then we will start to interview people and make the trip to Geisinger,” she said. “Geisinger did what it is supposed to do by informing us of what had happened and now we will take the proper steps.”
Depending what the Health and Human Services finds, Seeger said the doctor could face criminal charges. The penalties are included in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, which took effect this year as part of the federal government’s push to encourage hospitals to make greater use of electronic medical records. A list of similar incidents provided by Seeger showed that at least 500 medical facilities across the nation have been sanctioned for mishandling or losing track of personal information about patients. While the $1.5 million fine is possible, it was not immediately clear Tuesday if any medical facility has been hit with fines of that magnitude since the rules took effect.
“There could be legal charges depending on the nature of the incident,” Seeger said.“If the case is determined to be a legal matter, then we turn it over to the Department of Justice.”
Each incident that is reported can have several violations, Seeger said.
“The maximum penalty for each breech could be up to $1.5 million,” Seeger said. “There could be more then one violation found in any case.”
There was nothing in the e-mail that could affect patients vulnerability to financial identity theft, Geisinger said in a press release.
“Immediately upon speaking with the physician, he contacted and authorized his home e-mail provider to delete the protected health information from its network and servers,” said Geisinger privacy officer John Gildersleeve. “He also deleted this information from his home computer.”
Evangelical Community Hospital in Lewisburg has procedures to avoid these types of incidents, but Dale Moyer, information officer for Evangelical, said nothing is for sure.
“You can never say never,” Moyer said.
“We like to think we have precautions in order to make sure we never run in to situations like these and we try to make available every resource so that doctors don’t ever want to do those things,” he said.
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