Skip to main content

Home/ WPPS C-Suite News/ Group items tagged hitech

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
sandy ingram

Are you ready for a data breach? | Healthcare IT News - 0 views

www.healthcareitnews.com/...are-you-ready-data-breach

data breach HITECH DHS Risk Assessment Compliance

shared by sandy ingram on 23 Jun 10 - Cached
  • sandy ingram on 23 Jun 10
     
    The handling of data breach incidents has become a way of life for healthcare providers and with other HIPAA covered entities. With the passage of the HITECH Act last year, there are now substantial penalties that can be levied, up to $1.5 million. This fact, combined with a requirement to notify the Department of Health and Human Services as well as the media for data breach incidents that affect over 500 individuals has, for the first time, resulted in public records being kept for such incidents. If you oversee privacy, compliance, or IT for a hospital system, a group practice, a health insurance company, other covered entities, or even one of their business associates, the HITECH Act and its privacy and data breach provisions require your close attention. While many people know that HITECH generally creates requirements for data breach notification, there are at least four things you may not know about HITECH that you really should: The requirement for a mandatory incident-specific risk assessment for every incident The fact that HITECH notification provisions do not pre-empt state notification laws Encryption of data does not necessarily alleviate the risk of data breach If your business associate exposes your protected health information (PHI), you are responsible
sandy ingram

HITECH now specifically requires the business associate to notify their partner so that... - 0 views

www.technewsworld.com/...alth-IT-Post-HITECH-70443.html

Breach Law healthcare compliance HHS notification hitech hipaa

shared by sandy ingram on 02 Aug 10 - Cached
  • The total impact to the institution is difficult to quantify. Obviously no organization wants the negative press. It's the kind of thing that loses patients and makes the institution less appealing when trying to attract physicians.
  • Under the breach notification requirements of the HITECH Act (Title XIII of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), lost or stolen unencrypted records such as these requires notification to Health and Human Services for the public posting of the institution to HHS' "wall of shame," or public list of breaches involving more than 500 individuals. If you go to the HHS website right now, you'll see this incident listed there -- along with an ever-increasing laundry list of other institutions in the same boat.
  • This very public example of HITECH in action underscores just one of the many ways that the law has altered the way that healthcare does business. While the full impact of the law won't be seen for quite some time to come, we're starting to see some radical changes in the way that hospitals approach security and compliance.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Security Breaches From a provider point of view, probably the biggest impact from a security and compliance standpoint stems from the relatively strict breach disclosure requirements within the law. Covered entities not only need to notify in writing the individuals whose data was lost, but they also are required to notify HHS of the data loss.
  • Vendor Impact In addition to expanded disclosure provisions for business associates, HITECH also changes the landscape for them in that they now have a higher bar to meet in terms of their own security requirements
  • Under the law, business associates now have to meet the same bar as covered entities when it comes to the security rule.
  • However, covered entities are not alone in shouldering the burden of these more stringent rules. Business associates also have a role to play under the new provisions. Business associates now need to make sure that they report possible breaches to partners/customers and that they provide enough data for the covered entities to tell who was impacted and what type of data it was -- in other words, enough data for covered entities to fulfill their disclosure obligations. Whereas in the past a breach might occur at a business associate with nobody at the covered entity the wiser
  • HITECH now specifically requires the business associate to notify their partner so that the individuals impacted can be apprised.
  • Clearly, as applications move outside of the provider (for example, due to cloud computing) and more and more vendors move in to participate, rising numbers of vendors, hosting providers, and other service providers find themselves becoming "business associates" and inheriting security requirements that they're unfamiliar with. Even vendors not specifically targeting the healthcare market may find themselves in the direct path of the regs and obligated to change how they do business in response.
  • Vendors seeking to court healthcare clients will now need to pitch not only functionality but a compliance message as well.
  • sandy ingram on 02 Aug 10
     
    Just a few weeks ago, Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center learned a hard lesson. If you didn't see the news reports, the N.Y.-based healthcare provider notified over 130,000 individuals that their records -- including diagnostic information, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and other information of use to identity thieves -- was potentially lost."
sandy ingram

Ponemon #BREACH SURVEY: 56% suffer from financial identity theft and cost Hospitals $6 ... - 0 views

www.prnewswire.com/...acy-in-jeopardy-106945528.html

Privacy security compliance HITECH survey ponemon

shared by sandy ingram on 02 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • "Our research shows that the healthcare industry is struggling to protect sensitive medical information, putting patients at risk of medical identity fraud and costing hospitals and other healthcare services companies millions in annual breach-related costs," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute.  "At this point one would hope to see that healthcare organizations have improved information security practices and come into compliance with HITECH, now that it's been more than one year since it was enacted.  Instead we found enormous vulnerabilities.  The protection of patient data should be at the forefront of their efforts."
  • ey findings of the research: Data breaches are costing the healthcare system billions.  The total economic burden created by data breaches on the healthcare industry is nearly $6 billion annually.  The impact of a data breach over a two-year period is approximately $2 million per organization and the lifetime value of a lost patient is $107,580.  The average organization had 2.4 data breach incidents over the past two years.  Major factors causing data breaches are unintentional employee action, lost or stolen computing devices and third-party error.Healthcare organizations are not protecting patient data.  Organizations have little or no confidence in their ability to appropriately secure patient records (58 percent).  Healthcare organizations have inadequate resources (71 percent) and insufficient policies and procedures in place (69 percent) to prevent and quickly detect patient data loss.Protecting patient data is not a priority.  Seventy percent of hospitals stated that protecting patient data is not a top priority.  Patient billing (35 percent) and medical records (26 percent) are the most susceptible to data loss or theft.  A majority of organizations have less than two staff dedicated to data protection management (67 percent).HITECH has exposed the healthcare industry's lax data protection practices rather than improved the safety of patient records.  The majority (71 percent) of respondents do not believe the HITECH Act regulations have significantly changed the management practices of patient records.  The findings indicate that there is a significant number of data breaches that go undetected, and therefore unreported.
  • "We talk with healthcare compliance people dealing with data breach risks every day and they just can't get their arms around the problem of data exposure," said Rick Kam, president and co-founder of ID Experts.  "Unfortunately, in healthcare organizations, patient revenue trumps risk management."
  • sandy ingram on 02 Dec 10
     
    Hospitals Are Not Protecting Patient Data; Healthcare Industry Lagging Behind HITECH Standards TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. and PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 9, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- The latest benchmark study by Ponemon Institute, sponsored by ID Experts®, finds that data breaches of patient information cost healthcare organizations nearly $6 billion annually, and that many breaches go undetected.  The research indicates that protecting patient data is a low priority for hospitals and that organizations have little confidence in their ability to secure patient records, putting individuals at great risk for medical identity theft, financial theft and embarrassment of exposure of private information.
sandy ingram

Five Steps to HITECH Preparedness - CIO.com - 0 views

www.cio.com/...e_Steps_to_HITECH_Preparedness

HITECH privacy security Compliance CIO

shared by sandy ingram on 23 Jun 09 - Cached
  • In 2008, 44% of breach incidents were due to third-party handling of data. With HITECH, organizations will now be held responsible for a third party's handling of your data
  • sandy ingram on 23 Jun 09
     
    In 2008, 44% of breach incidents were due to third-party handling of data. With HITECH, organizations will now be held responsible for a third party's handling of your data
1 - 4 of 4
Showing 20▼ items per page