Privacy breach in BC’s prescription system
Posted July 11, 2014 4:37 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – There has been a major privacy breach in BC’s prescription medication dispensing information system. About 1,600 people’s personal information has been accessed.
The Ministry of Health says an audit has found the breach happened sometime between March 9th and June 19th of this year when someone used a doctor’s PharmaNet account without the doctor’s knowledge.
The information that was accessed included the names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, and personal health numbers for all of the affected people. Thirty-four people’s medication histories were also accessed.
The BC NDP citizens services critic George Heyman is raising security concerns about this news.
“If one person can get a doctor’s number and breach security, presumably other people can do it as well. That’s why the systems in place to prevent breaches need to be tight. They need to be implemented and that was not done so we don’t know if this is going to happen again or in fact it may have happened before.”
The ministry says no fraudulent prescriptions were written.
It points out enough information was accessed to be used for identity theft. The ministry is sending letters to all of the affected people and will offer them free credit protection services.
