She had jabbed pencils into her eyes to try to kill herself.  When the woman was brought to a Los Angeles County emergency room in 2012 alive and in pain, a hospital employee snapped a photograph, breaking a federal patient privacy law.  Two years later, when that photograph appeared on a website that features gory images, the patients medical information had been shared publicly, violating a state regulation.  The womans story is extreme, but her experience is an example of how her privacy was violated and her medical data breached. Both crimes, which are on the rise, can lead to identity theft or to misuse of information by health insurance companies, said Pam Dixon, executive director of the San Diego-based World Privacy Forum.  The employee disclosed sensitive information about the patient inappropriately and then when the photograph was posted online and went viral, that constituted a data breach, Dixon said. That data breach is against the law.  California state law requires hospitals to report breaches of patient medical data. The number of incidents investigated by the California Department of Public Health rose to 4,213 last year, or an 81 percent increase from 2009 when there were 2,333 cases.;