Privacy & Security
In an effort to help financial institutions understand how the HITECH Act and HIPAA directly affects their operations, four industry trade groups recently banded together to release a white paper "Compliance Guidelines for Financial Institutions in the Healthcare Sector: HITECH and the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules."
The Department of Health and Human Services withdrew its final breach notification rule for unsecured protected health information. Withdrawal of the rule came in late July, just days before the Rite Aid Corp. agreed to pay $1 million to settle potential violations of federal privacy rules.
As details about the back-up files that went missing from a Massachusetts hospital emerge, it's apparent that even with HHS' new proposed rules on security and privacy set to take effect soon, hospitals may still have to do more when it comes to protecting patient data.
Preventing patient data breaches is cited as the number one priority for healthcare IT decision makers, but work remains for complying with security regulations, according to a national survey that examines IT trends in healthcare.
People want to be informed and asked for consent before deciding whether to share their genetic information in a federal database, according to a Group Health study that bills itself as the first to ask patients about sharing their data.
Yale School of Medicine is in the process of notifying approximately 1,000 individuals whose clinical health information was contained on a laptop computer that was recently stolen.
Health information exchanges cannot share sensitive patient information beyond a simple point-to-point exchange without first obtaining a patient's consent, concluded the federal privacy and security tiger team.
A breakdown in data destruction protocols could help explain why back-up files containing information on 800,000 individuals were lost from a Mass. hospital after a data management company was hired to destroy them.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced a $250,000 settlement - the first of its kind in the country - with healthcare insurer Health Net and its affiliates over health data security breaches.
Less than one in 10 American adults use electronic medical records or e-mail their doctor, according to a new Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll.