Enforcing patients' rights under HIPAA to access their health information - including via health apps - is a top policy initiative at the HHS Office for Civil Rights, Director Roger Severino said in a Wednesday presentation. He also said a $2.1 million HIPAA penalty would be announced soon.
How might a national unique patient identifier improve the accuracy of patient record matching and potentially help address identity fraud? Julie Dooling of the American Healthcare Information Management Association - which has been lobbying for the development of such an ID - makes the case.
Seven healthcare and health IT industry groups are asking Congress to apply the brakes in issuing a final rule on interoperability, information blocking and health information exchange as required under the 21st Century Cures Act, citing concerns about privacy and other issues.
Some healthcare IT industry groups and large provider organizations are pushing the Senate to follow the House's lead and approve a measure to lift the 20-year ban on federal funding of the development or adoption of a unique national patient identifier. Why is this still such a hot privacy issue?
HHS has slapped a Florida healthcare provider with an $85,000 settlement for failing to provide a mother with timely access to fetal monitoring records. The settlement with Bayfront Health St. Petersburg is the agency's first enforcement action in its "HIPAA right of access initiative."
Google and the University of Chicago Medical Center have filed motions to dismiss a class action lawsuit that alleges patients' records were not properly de-identified by the hospital before they were shared with Google for research. Legal experts offer an analysis of the privacy case.
The Department of Health and Human Services has issued proposed changes to privacy rules related to the sharing of patient records created by federally assisted substance use disorder treatment programs. Do the proposals go too far, or not far enough?
Health IT vendor Allscripts says it has reached a preliminary $145 million settlement with the Department of Justice related to the business practices of Practice Fusion, an EHR vendor the company acquired last year. Among the issues involved are HIPAA, HITECH Act and Anti-Kickback Statute compliance.
DirectTrust's new effort to develop a standard for instant messaging in healthcare could potentially help providers securely communicate in real time over multiple platforms, says Scott Stuewe, the nonprofit alliance's president and CEO.
A watchdog agency review of a VA medical center in California spotlights security issues involving medical device "workarounds" that some experts say are common but often overlooked or underestimated risks.
A lawsuit against the University of Chicago Medical Center and Google seeking class action status points to the important privacy and security issues raised when sharing patient data for research purposes - and whether data can be truly "de-identified."
A Kansas hospital has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle allegations that it falsely attested to conducting a security risk analysis as required under the HITECH Act electronic health records financial incentives program. Two whistleblowers in the case will receive $50,000 from the settlement.
Federal regulators have smacked a cloud-based electronics health records vendor with a $100,000 HIPAA settlement in the wake of a 2015 cyberattack that affected millions of individuals. What's the focus of the enforcement action?
Federal regulators and medical device maker Philips have issued alerts about a security vulnerability in the company's Tasy electronic medical records system that could put patient data at risk. How common is this type of vulnerability?
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