Security

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services CIO, Tony Trenkle, is stepping down this month amid the problematic rollout of the Healthcare.gov website, CMS announced in an email to the staff.

When in the realm of healthcare privacy and security, electronic health records may facilitate easier data exchange and data viewing, but the systems' audit trails make catching unauthorized viewers all the more simple, too.

"The mismatch between patients and their clinical data is a serious and growing patient safety issue," says Meryl Bloomrosen, vice president of thought leadership, practice excellence and public policy at AHIMA, the organization of health information management professionals.

As healthcare facilities launch their own patient portals, technology is only the first step. Administrators are learning that decisions need to be made on everything from patient login protocols to support for patient record revisions.

Jeffrey L. Brown, M.S., CIO of Lawrence General Hospital in Lawrence, Mass., talks about breach prevention through employee education, the expense of device encryption and mobile security at the 2013 Privacy and Security Forum in Boston.

Despite the revamped federal HIPAA Omnibus Rule which holds covered entities and business associates more accountable for failing to adequately protect patients' health information, some groups continue to make the same old avoidable mistakes.

Three weeks after the disastrous launch of its health insurance marketplace, the Obama administration has vowed to redouble its efforts to fix its many glitches, promising a 'tech surge' to iron out its problems and improve the customer experience.

An Arizona hospital is facing scrutiny after one of its employees posted a workplace photo on Facebook, inadvertently including the protected health information and Social Security number of a patient.

A recent court decision ruling that a HIPAA-covered entity was not liable for losing a hard drive containing patients' protected health information could have big implications for future cases in the realm of privacy and security.

With an onus now on vendors to keep hosted data secure, that can make business associate agreements trickier than ever to negotiate as hospitals try to protect patient information and IT companies try to shield themselves from risk. Four providers offer tips from the trenches on getting the language right.