” This year, Pro Publica has been chronicling how weaknesses in federal and state laws, as well as lax enforcement, have left patients vulnerable to damaging invasions of privacy.More reporting like this: Within hours, a friend told Frances that a former high school pal who lived near her in northwest Indiana had shared a secret that only her family and a former boyfriend knew, she later said.A provider eventually can be forced to return federal payments.A woman who answered the phone Wednesday at Novus declined to comment.When I first learned that I had PKD I was a single working in the Los Angeles film and television industry, and had a lot of friends in that world.As my dating relationships became serious I relayed the fact that I had polycystic kidney disease, and that it was hereditary and could potentially be passed down to our children. In retrospect, I could have presented the information with a little less gravitas, and that might have helped, but there is no way to white wash the fact that our children could have a potentially fatal disease. Complicating all of this was the fact that I had two brothers with PKD who were becoming sick, faster than I was. While I feel better the tubing, machine noise and the length of treatment, 10 hours every night including hitching up and unhitching, has largely destroyed any intimate relationships.

“Please know that we take these types of situations very seriously,” the letter said.

“My heart fell to my stomach,” said Frances, a dental assistant in her late 20s who asked that her last name not be used.

“I started crying immediately.” The Facebook poster was a patient care technician at the local hospital where Frances was treated, but the two were no longer friends.

The Medical Board of California accused Peter Brabeck’s doctor in 2011 of overprescribing him controlled substances.

Afterward, Brabeck learned the doctor had hired a private investigator to look into him and gave him Brabeck's medical records.