Kaiser Trying to Rile Up Patients?

Just read the Mercury News story: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/11110907.htm

It looks like Kaiser is now informing patients of the "unlawful disclosure". The only reason why I can think they would do this now is that Kaiser hopes to whip up people against me. If Kaiser really thought people should know about the patient information, they would have informed people months ago when they quietly took the Systems Diagrams *they* posted offline.

Kaiser had the patient information posted online since *2002* at http://docviewer.tripod.com. Here is my blog post from July 2004 where I first pointed it out: http://www.livejournal.com/users/corphq/10816.html

Kaiser did not respond to my complaints or inform the patients at that time, and they did not take the Systems Diagrams down until September. Still not a word to the patients.

I also find it interesting that I couldn't get the press to cover it when I contacted everybody and their grandmothers to show what Kaiser had done. Now that Kaiser wants to hound me, however, the press is interested.

A copy of the navigation page for the Systems Diagrams can be found on the Internet Archive here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://docviewer.tripod.com

Note that the Systems Diagrams had been on the Web since at least December 2002. The patient information had been on the web at least a year and a half before I found it.

I originally reposted the site because I had filed a HIPAA complaint, and I didn't want Kaiser to cover up what they had done. However, Kaiser got off scot free: no $250,000.00 fine or prison time for them. I thought it was because the screenshots turned out to be test data, but now Kaiser is confirming it is indeed real patient information. And 140 patients were affected? Wow, I just found three.

If people want to be angry at me for discovering that Kaiser had posted patient information on the Internet and trying to prevent Kaiser from covering it up, I hope they remember to get angry at Kaiser for posting the information in the first place - not to mention leaving it online for over a year and failing to tell patients about what they had done.

This has nothing to do with Kaiser's care for patients and everything to do with Kaiser's ability to manipulate the media. Regular people have to swing from the rafters to get the press to cover anything: Kaiser just has to call a contact or issue a press release. This is part of what I wanted to expose, so yay. :-)


Ps. Matthew Holt has written an update article about me his Health Care Blog:
http://matthewholt.typepad.com/the_health_care_blog/

Update: I just got a hit from NBC on my Kaiser Parody web site! :-)

PPs. If I have time, I will post the C&D notice that Kaiser sent me. They attempt to invoke HIPAA, which should not apply to me since I'm not a health care plan or provider. I also just realized something really funny about it: Kaiser tries to invoke my employment agreement...that they've already broken. I guess yet another reason for Kaiser to consider the idea of actually upholding the law on their end is that they would have a valid contract to wave before me now. But as a result of their own illegal actions and refusal to conduct an internal investigation to fix the problem, they have squat.