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As the Sept. 23, 2013 compliance date for the HIPAA omnibus rule creeps closer, many healthcare organizations are reviewing their current policies and procedures. One area that may fly under the radar but is critical to HIPAA compliance is an more »
Pitting public health and well-being against patient confidentiality is nothing new in the healthcare industry and won’t die down anytime soon, but the ongoing debate has been magnified of late in Boston. The Boston Public Health Commission recently received criticism more »
Effective in July, CVS drug stores will no longer use patient prescription drug records for the purpose of sending patient pharmaceutical-paid refill notices. The organization’s argument for doing so revolves around new HIPAA omnibus provisions that restrict how third-party organizations more »
One of the core issues for health data breach victims over the past few years has been the refrain that the incident was an anomaly and won’t happen again. Viewing a breach as a rogue incident would exacerbate the problem more »
During a recent hearing titled “Does HIPAA help or hinder patient care and public safety?” in front of U.S. House Oversight and Investigation subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, multiple parents denounced HIPAA for its perceived restrictive language. But more »
According to in-house HHS attorney Iliana Peters, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be offering additional guidance on the HIPAA omnibus rule. Rachel Seeger, Senior Health Information Privacy Outreach Specialist for the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), told more »
Highland Solutions, a hosting and services vendor, recently announced that it had expanded its enterprise offerings into healthcare and become HIPAA compliant as a business associate (BA). But what exactly does that entail from a vendor’s perspective? HealthITSecurity.com spoke with more »
With intent to ascertain whether HIPAA truly is an obstruction to accessing mental health patient data to enter into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for gun purchases, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a more »
The new HIPAA omnibus rule will have a considerable impact on HIPAA covered entities, business associates (BAs) and subcontractors, but law firms representing both covered entities and BAs can offer unique perspective on how each side is affected by new more »
Part of the Obama administration’s proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 budget was the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed budget and a large area of concentration was on health information privacy and security. The requested Office of the National more »
In yet another case where the lines between HIPAA and state law have been blurred, the Northern Florida Appeals Court had to discern between how state law language and federal privacy laws should be interpreted. The court decided that HIPAA more »
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) sent out an email this morning with additions to its HIPAA Administrative Simplification Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS). While many of these FAQs don’t necessarily provide new information, they are helpful in hashing more »
With the HIPAA omnibus rule going into effect recently and the compliance date coming in September, not just healthcare providers are preparing but vendors as well. Below are a couple of recent offerings that are meant to help providers become more »
HIPAA compliance is more important than ever, but how can you be compliant with all the disparate systems you are managing? This whitepaper gives you nine ways Imprivata can prepare you before any HIPAA audit occurs—without impacting your end users. more »
The HIPAA omnibus rule went into effect yesterday and with it will come varying degrees of change for healthcare organizations. Some believe that the HIPAA changes are more cosmetic for healthcare organizations. But others such as Diana Warner, Director of more »
Today marks the effective date for the HIPAA omnibus final rule and the beginning of the six-month period in which covered entities, business associates and subcontractors have to ensure they’re HIPAA compliant. While the details of the new regulations have more »
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH) Committee on Operating Rules for Information Exchange (CORE) will hold an Affordable Care Act (ACA) Section 1104 informational session today from 2-3 p.m. EST. Section 1104 more »
The Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights is preparing to transition to a permanent audit program, building off of the HIPAA audits that took place in 2012. According to a notice in the Federal Register, the more »
The 24th Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey, which collected the opinions healthcare provider organizations’ IT pros, was released last week and provided insight into healthcare security concerns, infrastructure priorities and other compliance considerations. The Web-based survey used 298 responses from nearly 600 more »
In sifting through the recent HIPAA omnibus changes, healthcare organizations that currently are or plan to be affiliated with military organizations such as the Department of Defense (DoD) or the Veterans Administration (VA) may want to analyze some rule overlaps. more »
A common refrain among critics of the healthcare industry’s approach to patient privacy and security holds that if it were only to imitate the one taken by the financial industry, then many of obstacles to doing business and remaining HIPAA more »
In addition to standard, cross-industry risk and compliance issues, the healthcare industry has turned into an alphabet soup of regulatory standards – such as HIPAA, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), Stark more »
Within the healthcare community, the cloud has been perceived as a double-edged sword. On one side, the cloud represents a cost-effective solution to the problem of affording the capacity to store and analyze massive amounts of data; on the other, more »
In wake of the recently-released HIPAA omnibus rule, healthcare organizations are beginning to figure out how they’re going to achieve compliance. Andrew Hicks, director and healthcare practice lead at Coalfire, an independent IT governance, risk and compliance firm, has been more »
HIPAA software and services vendor Clearwater Compliance recently released its “Top 8 Reasons Executives Need a HIPAA-HITECH Update Due to Omnibus Final Rule.” The list explains why privacy and compliance officers for healthcare organizations need to take a long look at more »
