Cases of staff members accessing on medical records are relatively common, although an incident at Tewksbury Hospital in Massachusetts stands out duration of time that an employee was accessing medical records without authorization before being apprehended. The...
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule allows patients to view the health information held by their providers. According to a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) release there is only a relatively small amount of...
In June 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed it was considering updating its data breach portal – commonly referred to as the OCR ‘Wall of Shame’. Section 13402(e)(4) of the HITECH Act obliges OCR to maintain a public list of privacy breaches of...
A Plastic Surgery Associates of South Dakota ransomware attack has potentially resulted in criminals gaining access to the protected health information (PHI) of 10,200 of its patients. Last year, OCR confirmed in its ransomware guidance that a ransomware attack is...
KPMG has published the findings of its recent Cyber Healthcare & Life Sciences Survey. The survey was conducted on 100 individuals with responsibility for information security at healthcare providers and payers with annual revenues in excess of $500 million. The...
For the second time this month, a healthcare provider has announced that an investigation into a ransomware attack has revealed a historic data breach. Earlier this month, Peachtree Neurological Clinic discovered a 15-month data breach during an investigation into a...
HITRUST has announced it is embarking on a new Community Extension Program to reach out to healthcare organizations to provide advice on best practices to adopt to improve cybersecurity. The new program will enable HITRUST to discuss cybersecurity issues with...
AHIMA, the American Healthcare Information Management Association, has announced it has developed a model HIPAA release form that can be used by HIPAA-covered entities to streamline the processing of requests for copies of patients’ health information. The Health...
ONC National Coordinator Don Rucker, M.D., has confirmed that the office will be closed out in fiscal year 2018 due to the cuts to the budget of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) Deven McGraw, the Deputy Director for...
Peachtree Neurological Clinic has uncovered a 15-month security incident during the investigation of a ransomware attack. The Atlanta, GA clinic says the incident has resulted in the exposure of 176,295 patients’ protected health information. Initially, sensitive data...
Dropbox is a widely-used file hosting service operated by many organizations to share files, but what about protected health information? Is the service HIPAA compliant? Dropbox beleives it now supports HIPAA and HITECH Act compliance but that does not mean Dropbox is...
The names, admission dates and medical record numbers of 5,292 patients of University of Iowa Health Care were accessible over the Internet for around 2 years as a result of an error configuring an application development website. University of Iowa Healthcare reports...
A recent survey conducted by risk management software vendor Netwrix has revealed only 5% of healthcare organizations are using software for risk management and security governance. Additionally, only 32% of healthcare organizations said they had a separate...
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has issued a reminder to all covered entities and business associates of the possible risks associated with file sharing and collaboration tools, outlining the dangers these services can...
