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By Mary Mosquera
Last year’s HITECH Act toughened the rules and enforcement penalties health information handlers must follow to protect patient privacy.
Under the new policy regime, providers will have to pay more attention to the confidentiality and safety of patient information as they move more of their operations toward electronic health record-keeping.
Without [...]
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By Tom Murphy
INDIANAPOLIS – WellPoint Inc. has notified 470,000 individual insurance customers that medical records, credit card numbers and other sensitive information may have been exposed in the latest security breach of the health insurer’s records.
The Indianapolis company said the problem stemmed from an online program customers can use to track the progress [...]
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The Health & Human Services Department published draft guidance to help healthcare providers and payers figure out what is expected of them in doing a risk analysis of their protected patient health information.
The security rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires that providers, payment plans and their [...]
By Margaret Collins BLOOMBERG NEWS
Sierra Morgan was billed $12,000 on her health care credit card in November for liposuction, a procedure she never requested or received.
“It’s depressing to know that someone used my name and knows so much about me,” said Morgan, 31, a respiratory therapist from Modesto, Calif.
There were more than 275,000 cases in [...]
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The Associated Press
Posted: 04/06/2010 08:31:15 AM PDT
WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—More than 5,000 patients in the John Muir hospital system have been warned of a potential security breach after two laptop computers that contained personal and health information were stolen.
The laptops were stolen from a perinatal office in Walnut Creek in February. [...]
by Marcia Savage
The health care industry was buzzing with the news: For the first time ever, a hospital was being audited for compliance with HIPAA security requirements. The audit of Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general in 2007 was surprising for hospitals, health insurers and others [...]
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The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO—The medical records of more than 4,000 patients at the University of California, San Francisco may have been compromised after a laptop they were on was stolen.
Officials with the university said Wednesday the laptop was recovered earlier this month after it was taken from a medical school employee during a [...]
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By Erin Allday, SF Chronicle
Hackers may have had access to personal information for about 600 UCSF patients as a result of an Internet “phishing” scam, campus officials said Tuesday.
The security breach occurred in September when a faculty physician in the UCSF School of Medicine provided a user name and password in response to [...]
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Here we have another unnecessary major security breach in a large healthcare organization which resulted in a loss of patient data demonstrating poor baseline security. They clearly are not ready for the new HIPAA provision ARRA and HITECH. Review my threats page and evaluate your current business and system risks to [...]
Another stolen laptop puts thousands of people’s personal data at risk but this time it’s the caregivers — not the patients — who are at risk.
November 6, 2009
By Larry Barrett:
More than 10,000 physicians’ and dentists’ personal data was exposed last week in New Hampshire after an employee at Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield transferred [...]
