2 Investigators: Clinic’s Email Blunder Compromises Privacy Of AIDS Patient

September 17, 2012 12:00 AM " CHICAGO (CBS) — A local medical facility is in hot water with patients over a mass e-mail sent this summer.

CBS 2′s Dave Savini reports the e-mail blunder could actually be a critical violation of state and federal laws created to protect patient privacy.

The Northstar Healthcare clinic in Chicago specializes in treating people with HIV or AIDS. Information about its patients, including a man Savini interviewed, is supposed to be kept confidential.

The patient has AIDS and did not want to reveal his real name in this report.

But he’s angry and says Northstar violated his right to privacy when they sent a mass e-mail revealing his name, along with more than 170 other patients.

“I couldn’t believe that the people I entrusted in my health care, my private health care, that they violated my trust,” said Jack. “Not only did they violate it for me, but they violated it for every patient at the clinic.”

The privacy breach is part of the danger in our digital age, says Ann Hilton Fisher, who heads the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago.

“It takes nothing,” she says. ”You got a list and you hit the wrong button, and poof, it’s out there these days.” "

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