By Mike Semel – Don’t believe “We’re from the government and we are here to help you.” After a data breach in 2006 the FTC settled with ChoicePoint for $ 10 million and a 20-year monitored compliance program. Twenty-Years! In 2012 a company that had a HIPAA data breach was forced out of the state for two years by the Minnesota Attorney General.
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By Steve Spearman. Earlier this summer, the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) published a paper titled Impact of the HITECH act on physicians’ adoption of electronic health records, that analyzed how well HITECH has incentivized doctors to make the leap into EHR.
By Steve Spearman – Performing a risk analysis is the cornerstone of HIPAA compliance, so it’s important to understand the regulations that require risk analysis, as well as how to conform to these rules. This week’s Q&A with Steve Spearman, focuses on understanding the essentials of risk analysis.
By Matt Fisher – It often seems as though a day does not go by without the report of a new breach of healthcare data. Examples of breaches include loss of unencrypted devices (whether laptops, flash drives or other devices), usage of non-secure services, inattention to paper records, employee snooping, and more.
By Steve Spearman – This past summer, the state of Colorado’s Medicaid program, the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF), accidentally sent letters containing PHI to the wrong addresses, affecting individuals from 1,069 households.
By Mike Semel – Once you become aware of a HIPAA data breach it is not a good idea to sweep it under the rug, especially when that is breaking the law and anyone who finds out can report you. Just because they are free and easy doesn’t mean you should use just any Internet file sharing service for storing patient information.
By Kirk J Nahra – By now, most people have felt the effects of the HIPAA Privacy Rule (from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). HIPAA has set the primary standard for the privacy of healthcare information in the United States since the rule went into effect in 2003. It’s an important rule that creates significant baseline privacy protections for healthcare information across the country.
By Matt Fisher – A hospital in Arkansas recently learned the lesson of the nuances contained within the HIPAA Privacy Rule. There are many uses and disclosures identified in the Privacy Rule that permit actions that would otherwise appear to be a breach.
Cybersecurity was identified as an increased business priority over the past year according to 87 percent of respondents in the newly released 2015 HIMSS Cybersecurity Survey.