In the second major HIPAA enforcement action announced by federal authorities this week, Massachusetts General Hospital and its physicians organization have entered into a resolution agreement that calls for paying a $1 million settlement and taking corrective action to avoid future violations.
The owner of four clinics in Maryland has been fined $4.3 million for HIPAA privacy rule violations that involved failing to provide 41 patients with access to their medical records and then failing to cooperate with federal investigators.
Physicians adopting electronic health records systems need to demonstrate to their patients that they're taking adequate steps to keep records secure because so many consumers are worried about health information privacy.
Security professionals attending the HIMSS Conference list their key challenges, including developing truly practical privacy and security policies and procedures.
Federal regulators won't issue final versions of two important rules that deal with healthcare information privacy and security issues until the second half of this year, says security expert Lisa Gallagher.
Deven McGraw, co-chair of the Privacy and Security Tiger Team that's advising federal regulators, offers insights on how the team's recommendations might be implemented and what topics it will tackle next.
Charleston Area Medical Center in West Virginia is notifying nearly 4,000 patients of a health information breach incident involving personal information exposed on a research website.
The federal list of major health information breaches included 240 incidents affecting 6.5 million individuals as of Thursday. But that number soon could grow substantially as a result of incidents that made headlines this week.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., will head a new subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law, said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Many of those testifying at a hearing about a presidential council's call for a universal exchange language Tuesday urged a go-slow, deliberative approach to the effort to improve the interoperability of electronic health records while maintaining privacy.
HealthcareInfoSecurity.com will provide in-depth coverage of privacy and security issues at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Conference next week.
Implementing electronic health records software that includes security functions is just the first of many steps involved in ensuring security, says Bonnie Cassidy, president of the American Health Information Management Association.
Some 1.7 million individuals are being notified of a health information breach incident involving data from The New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. It's the largest breach reported so far under the HITECH Act breach notification rule.
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