Privacy & Security
Despite the amazing potential of mobile healthcare, many concerns still remain over the issues of privacy and security.
Deborah Peel, MD, was trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst and worked as a psychiatrist in Austin, Texas, for nearly three decades before becoming a privacy activist, founding the group Patient Privacy Rights in 2006 after being appalled by HIPAA's evolution into what she sees as a weak baseline for privacy and security.
Employers who ignore or are only partially compliant with healthcare privacy issues could face greater government scrutiny and fines, says Philadelphia attorney Christopher Ezold.
Approximately 4,000 patients at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) have been notified this December that their personal health information has been compromised after an unencrypted device containing patient medical data was stolen from the car of an Omnicell employee.
For the coming new year, healthcare groups and their business associates need to get their privacy and security houses in order, as they will be facing new audits and more monetary enforcement surrounding data breaches -- this according to Leon Rodriguez, director of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The National eHealth Collaborative's Health Information Exchange Learning Network has recommendations for tackling some of the most challenging HIE issues.
In 2011, Micky Tripathi, founder and CEO of Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC) and health IT industry expert, found himself in unfamiliar territory after an unencrypted MAeHC laptop containing 14,475 patient medical records was stolen from an employee's locked car. After working to rectify the situation transparently, Tripathi said no one is immune from data breaches.
As Tim Zoph sees it, it's decision time for patient data security -- a defining moment for "one of the issues of our time in healthcare," that demands healthcare leaders everywhere step up. Zoph, CIO of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago since 1993 and a CHIME/HIMSS CIO of the Year, headlined the Healthcare IT News and HIMSS Media Privacy & Security Forum Dec. 12 in Boston.
Healthcare IT News' top 10 list of the largest healthcare data breaches of 2012 should send a blaring message: Healthcare organizations are not taking the steps necessary to protect patients' personal health information
Even though evidence suggests that healthcare records are more valuable to crooks than financial records, three out of five healthcare organizations are not allocating enough resources to their protect patient data. Ironically, a big reason is that the industry has no way to place a value on that information.