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
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
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
A myopic focus on protecting EMR (Electronic Medical Records) systems has left healthcare organizations open to shadow information risk. In a world where hackers and ransomware criminals are regularly compromising healthcare...more
Queen Creek Medical Center (QCMC), also known as Desert Wells Family Medicine, located in Arizona, has notified up to 35,000 patients of a data breach following a ransomware attack that corrupted its medical records system,...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
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services recently issued its Summer 2021 Cybersecurity Newsletter, which focuses on controlling access to electronic PHI (ePHI) and the HIPAA Security...more
Ransomware Particularly Inflicts Health Care and Life Sciences Organizations - Ransomware is a malicious cyber threat vector that employs encryption malware to prevent users from accessing their systems and data unless...more
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf announced this week that the Commonwealth will not continue to do business with its contact tracing vendor following a security incident that potentially exposed the personal information of...more
Cyberattacks against healthcare providers accounted for 79% of all reported data breaches in 2020. (See here). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and...more
Users of Universal Health Services (UHS), one of the largest healthcare systems in the country, recently lost access to electronic medical records when UHS suffered a ransomware attack and took its systems offline to...more
Report on Patient Privacy 20, no. 11 (November 2020) - HHS Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology (ONC) is giving health care organizations more time to meet new rules on information...more
On October 8, 2020, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal (AG) announced that his office has entered into a multi-state settlement agreement with Community Health Systems, Inc. (CHS) stemming from an investigation of a...more
Regulatory bodies are upping the ante when it comes to settling with companies that have suffered data breaches. In addition to the below settlements, see also the settlement between the OCR and Dignity Health....more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has announced that it has settled potential violations of HIPAA with Athens Orthopedic Clinic PA (Athens) for $1.5 million, following an...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reached a settlement for $1,500,000 and entered into a substantial corrective action plan with Athens Orthopedic Clinic (AOC) as a result of AOC’s...more
Health care organizations continue to be a popular target for hackers. According to information from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), over 30 reports of data breaches have been filed by health care...more
It is being reported that LifeLabs, a Canadian lab company that is the largest provider of laboratory diagnostics and lab testing services in Canada, recently paid an undisclosed ransom to hackers who compromised its computer...more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it has fined the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (TXHHS) $1.6 million for HIPAA violations. This is one of the few fines the OCR has levied against a state agency....more
In accordance with the Inflation Adjustment Act, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has updated its regulations to reflect required annual inflation-related increases to civil monetary penalties, including...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
What have you done for me lately? Now that the tune is stuck in your head, specifically, have you recently conducted a thorough and up to date risk assessment in accordance with the requirements of the Health Insurance...more
While healthcare organizations are embracing new technologies such as patient portals, a recent report shows that organizations’ cybersecurity measures for these technologies are behind the times. A patient portal is a secure...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
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it has entered into a settlement with a business associate that provides electronic medical records services to health...more
Medical Informatics Engineering, Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiaries (MIE) and the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS-OCR) entered into a $100,000 settlement and two-year...more