Over at Healthcareinfosecurity.com there is an insightful article on the first HIPAA audits. Some highlights of the article include: In the pilot phase, OCR is auditing eight health plans, two claims clearinghouses plus 10 provider organizations, including three hospitals, three physicians’ offices, and a laboratory, a dental office, a nursing/custodial facility and a pharmacy. ...
The Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) has announced that they will perform 150 HIPAA audits by the end of 2012. The chance of you getting audited is very small but what if you open up your mail one day and found a notice that your medical practice has been select to be audited?...
It seems that every day it becomes more and more clear that the government is planning on enforcing HIPAA regulations. Patient data privacy and security is becoming their priority. This could have to do with the fact that almost 8 million patients have had their data breached over the past 2 years. And considering that...
I had a conversation with a group of physicians a couple weeks ago that shed some interesting light on where patient information resides and how to protect it. Each of the 5 physicians had a smartphone of various manufacturers. Two had iPhones, two had Android phones and one had a Blackberry phone. I asked the...
To be successfully in any business you need a few basic elements. Two of the elements include; customers that value your service and are willing to purchase your services. Secondly, you also need to eliminate or reduce liabilities that can damage or hurt your business. Implementing HIPAA security can help your business The first element...
There is a great post over at Infosec Island regarding a letter that was received from the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) after a data breach that occurred at a small medical practice. The breach was the result of a burglary. No details were given on what was stolen or what kind of patient information...
It seems that at least twice a month we are hearing about a health care organization that has had a data breach because of a lost of stolen laptop. Every time I read about a new breach I shake my head and ask myself why aren’t these organizations using encryption to protect the contents on...
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) showed once again that is serious about enforcing the HIPAA security and privacy regulations. OCR invited the 50 state attorneys general (AG) to 2 day in-person meetings to prepare them to better enforce the HIPAA regulations. The HITECH Act gave state attorneys general the authority to bring civil actions...
The Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued a $4.3 million fine to Cignet Health of Prince George’s County, MD (Cignet) for violating the Privacy Rule of HIPAA. Cignet refused to provide 41 patients with access to their medical records. Under HIPAA, patients are entitled to have access to their medical...
According the Health Data Management magazine, The HHS Office for Civil Rights plans big changes to privacy and security regulations. Below are some sections from their article. Adam Greene, senior health IT and privacy advisor in the OCR, outlined a slew of changes to existing regulations. The final HITECH privacy, security and breach notification rules...
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