Podcast: Discussing Information Blocking with Eddie Williams
Podcast: Keeping an Eye on HIPAA Trends with Shannon Hartsfield
A Zero Percent Error Rate: An Inspiring Story on How to Get There
Expanded Information Block Rules Go into Effect
Podcast: Interoperability: Information Blocking Claims and Enforcement - Diagnosing Health Care
Podcast: Interoperability: Health Care's Next Disruptor Is openEHR - Diagnosing Health Care
Podcast: Interoperability: A New Vision Through openEHR - Diagnosing Health Care
Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Podcast | Episode 99: David Stefanich, Co-founder and CEO, Rymedi
Podcast: Interoperability - the Role of Health Information Exchanges - Diagnosing Health Care
Gerry Blass on Healthcare Vendor Risk Management
Hooper, Kearney and Macklin on Cutting Edge Topics in the False Claims Act
AGG Talks: Technology - In the Balance: Interoperability and Security
The New Information Blocking Rule: What It Means For Hospices
Sitting with the C-Suite: Looking Ahead to Potential Compliance Issues Due to COVID-19
From NC State to Changing the State of Health Information Networks, with Medicom Technologies’ Malcolm Benitz
Exploring Digitization of Health and Medical Data and Records Part Two
Exploring Digitization of Health and Medical Data and Records Part One
Patient Records Requests: What You Need to Know
Electronic Medical Records: Help or Hindrance?
Technology in Healthcare
Over the course of the past few months, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), both of which are divisions of the U.S. Department of Health and...more
As our loyal Practical Privacy readers may remember, back in December of 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (the “FTC” or “Commission”) began a rulemaking process to update the Commission’s Health Breach Notification Rule...more
The healthcare sector is increasingly facing cyber-threats with ransomware and hacking at the forefront. In the last five years, there has been a staggering 256% rise in significant hacking-related breaches and a 264% surge...more
You are the HIPAA privacy official of a hospital or health plan (a covered entity under HIPAA). You receive an email from a vendor that handles protected health information (a business associate), informing you that one month...more
The healthcare sector is a prime target for data breaches. According to a summary by the HIPAA Journal, 32% of all data breaches between 2015 and 2022 were in the healthcare sector, “almost double the number recorded in the...more
Report on Patient Privacy Volume 22, Number 11. November 2022 - The second largest nonprofit hospital chain in the U.S. has been grappling with an Oct. 3 cybersecurity incident that affected facilities across the country,...more
Cyber-attacks on health care entities are becoming increasingly frequent, and the resulting data breaches are often complex. In the event of a cyber-attack, health care entities and their business associates must adhere to...more
According to the 2022 State of Ransomware Report issued recently by Sophos, it surveyed 5,600 IT professionals from 31 countries, including professionals in the health care sector. Those professionals in the health care...more
The FTC recently published two new resources for complying with the Health Breach Notification Rule. The Rule requires vendors of personal health records (PHR), PHR-related entities and service providers to these entities, to...more
The intersection of health and bankruptcy law could not be more pronounced in the event of a cataclysmic event. A cyberattack is such an event. Following the cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline, which led to a multiday shutdown...more
Given what the healthcare industry faced in 2020, the seventh edition of our Data Security Incident Response (DSIR) Report, “Disruption and Transformation,” is aptly titled. As if fighting the COVID-19 pandemic weren’t enough...more
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on April 2 that HHS is exercising its enforcement discretion to permit business associates to use and disclose protected health information (PHI) for public health...more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on October 23, 2019, that Jackson Health System (“Jackson”), a not for profit hospital system comprised of six hospitals, urgent care centers, nursing facilities and primary care...more
Consistent with our experience, security firm McAfee has confirmed in a report that ransomware attacks have doubled in 2019. Medical providers have been hit hard this year, and one provider, Wood Ranch Medical, located in...more
As readers of this blog know, data breaches in the health care industry are all too common. Healthcare organizations are an attractive target for hackers because of the nature and amount of personal information that they...more
Data compliance in China’s health care industry is multifaceted and highly sensitive, and applies to numerous types of data generated across the continuum of care. Multiple pieces of legislation prescribe complex regulatory...more
Atrium Health and its vendor AccuDoc Solutions have released a joint announcement this week that AccuDoc’s database of 2.6 million billing records of Atrium Health’s patients has been compromised by a hacking incident....more
Cyber-attacks on healthcare data are becoming increasingly common and costly and last week even CMS announced that it had suffered a data breach....more
It is clear that the healthcare industry continues to be targeted with cyber-attacks. In 2018, the 10 largest health care breaches, outlined here, include unauthorized access to protected health information (PHI) through a...more
Medical transcription provider MEDantex has reportedly exposed the protected health information of thousands of patients through its unsecured provider portal, which did not require a password for access....more
The health care industry continues to get hammered by SamSam ransomware attacks, to the point that the Department of Health and Human Services Healthcare Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (HCCIC) has issued...more
In the first settlement for HIPAA violations in 2018, Fresenius Medical Care North America (Fresenius) has agreed to pay $3.5 million to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to settle allegations against it relating to five data...more
Children’s Medical Center of Dallas (Children’s) was hit with a $3.2 million civil penalty from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for failing to take steps to properly protect...more
In a rare move by the OCR, it assessed a $3.2 million fine against Children’s Medical Center of Dallas (Children’s) after it issued a Notice of Proposed Determination against Children’s and Children’s failed to request a...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has vacated a district court's dismissal of a data breach class action filed against Horizon Healthcare Services Inc., in the wake of the 2013 theft of two computer laptops...more