Privacy & Security
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.
Device encryption may seem like a fairly straightforward undertaking, but it's proven to be one HIPAA-covered entities and business associates frequently forgo -- much to their chagrin down the road, when they're notifying individuals of a privacy breach involving unencrypted personal data.
The patient identification issue refuses to go away, mainly because nobody has quite figured out how to assure proper patient identity in health information exchange. At the CHIME Fall CIO Forum in Phoenix, some leading hospital CIOs emphasized the importance of accurate patient matching.
The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to be one of the biggest offenders of HIPAA privacy and security rules and has reported egregious breaches in recent years, affecting millions of veterans and active service members.
It's been almost two weeks since Obamacare's federal insurance exchange website went live, was inundated with traffic, went weird, was taken down for maintenance, then came back online still filled with glitches. Why did such a crucial site fail at such a critical moment? And what are the lessons that can be learned?
A Tennessee-based healthcare provider is notifying thousands of patients that their protected health information has been compromised following a privacy breach due to unencryption. The incident has prompted the hospital to move its records to an encrypted cloud-based server.