Background & Challenges “We had no idea where our compliance posture stood, or how much of our daily practices were already in compliance. However we did know that we were not in compliance as much as we should’ve been,” said Donnell, office manager for Internal Medicine Associates of Memphis, Tennessee. This is not an uncommon…
Background & Challenges Barbara is the office manager for a Grand Rapids, Michigan family practice with four staffers and 1800 patients. The practitioner has been providing healthcare services to patients for 24 years. While attending her monthly association meeting of regional physician office managers, Barbara met local services provider Joe Dylewski, president of ATMP Solutions,…
Cyber threats and cyber-security are getting full attention across the world with many governments setting up aggressive cyber security mechanisms. Enterprises irrespective of the type of the industry and size of business are prone to cyber-attacks and the consequential data breaches with the healthcare industry being most affected. HIPAA breaches are getting rampant with a…
Premera Blue Cross, a health plan in the Pacific Northwest, is about to get on the Wall of Shame as soon as HHS confirms details of Premera hacking incident where reportedly a cyber-attack exposed personal information of 11 million individuals, the second largest breach on the federal tally. The initial attack occurred on May 5, 2014…
Irrespective of the industry, the digital era demands protection of employee privacy and particularly the healthcare information as a vital obligation on the part of every employer. While the governments have designed HIPAA and HITECH laws to effectively manage this information, remaining compliant to these regulations is a daunting challenge in the world of cyber…
With the healthcare industry moving towards digitalization, the electronic health records even in protected formats are becoming increasingly attractive to the criminals of the cyber world. Not a day goes by without news articles published about hospitals or medical practitioners paying millions of dollars as penalties due to public exposure of the protected health information.…
Bad enough that robbers were stealing a laptop and a cell phone from a physician, but in a unique incident, the assailants forced the physician to disclose the password and encryption keys to the encrypted data in the laptop. Even as enterprises work their way to protect their data from cyber criminals, unique incidents such…
The need for effective patient care has driven governments to move the healthcare industry into the digital world. To promote this among the eligible providers and stop the innumerable cases of data loss due to transfer of information on paper charts the government is giving incentives to those who adopt Electronic Health Records (EHR). However,…
Technological innovations over the years has paved the way for physicians and healthcare professionals to adopt mobile technology in their healthcare practices. While this has brought in positive impacts on patient care, organizational efficiency and work flow, healthcare data breaches have unfortunately become a major issue faced by large number of healthcare providers. Even as…
The Connecticut case of Emily Byrne vs. Avery Center for Obstetrics and Gynecology may be a trend-setter where healthcare providers and business associates could be at legal risk by failing to follow the HIPAA regulation or other privacy regulation. In this case, a patient sued the healthcare clinic for releasing her medical records to a…
