The health insurer Anthem Inc., which manages Blue Cross plans across a dozen states, recently announced that a hacking incident has compromised a database containing personal information of nearly 80 million individuals worldwide. Anthem believes that the unencrypted compromised information could include current and former members? and employees? names, birthdates, medical IDs/Social Security Numbers, Street…
The increasing number of data breaches from cyber criminals across various enterprises have brought in large scale loss of personal information besides financial losses and brand erosion. Even as technological growth helped governments across nations improve their communication and governance levels multi-fold, the cyber security breaches have pressurized them to work on security policy changes.…
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…
With digital technology entering the healthcare industry in many ways, there has been a need to ensure meaningful use of electronic health records and ensure privacy of such medical records. To promote this, the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Program offers financial incentives to the healthcare enterprises. However, to receive this incentive the CMS has…
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,…
Skagit County, Washington has agreed to a monetary settlement of $215,000 for potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy, Security and Breach Notification Rules. In addition to this, Skagit County is also to work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services to correct deficiencies in its…
Patient Health Information (PHI) is as important an asset as any other. Healthcare providers and business associates therefore have to ensure that they protect patient records as they would protect any other significant business asset. David Holtzman, a former senior official at an agency that enforces HIPAA, offered useful insights on safeguarding PHI as a…
Safeguarding patient health information has always remained one of the top priorities for healthcare. To further this interest, federal advisors have spelled out revisions to the HIPAA Accounting of Disclosures Rule. The Health IT Policy Committee has endorsed the recommendations put forth by its Privacy and Security Tiger Team in its meeting held on December…
