Mar 04 2009

HIPAA accountability and security program

Category: hipaa,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 7:34 pm

Logo of the United States Department of Health...
Last year the department of Health and Human Services (HHS) started penalizing healthcare organizations for security breaches and lack of security program. Healthcare stimulus bill says that HHS will post a breach of healthcare organization on their website. In both cases the intent is clear that HHS want to hold healthcare organizations accountable for security lapses.

World Privacy Forum (WPF) states in recent report that medical identity theft is on the rise and it leaves false information in medical records that can torment victims’ medical lives for years. Medical identity theft mostly carried out by insiders with legitimate access to medical and insurance billing. Patient medical files, and addresses can be changed to reflect phony medical care, and insurance payments are forwarded to different address.

HHS has given ample warning and time to healthcare organization to get their house in order. Healthcare stimulus bill which require digitizing healthcare records will demand even more stringent security program from healthcare organizations. Time is of the essence for healthcare organizations to start their security strategy planing now to implement their security program before HHS come knocking at their door.

Risk Management Process:

Like other compliance initiatives, HIPAA also require organizations to build a security risk management program to manage their daily risks. The process of risk management consists of risk assessment (analyzing the risks), design/select control, implement control, test control, maintain/ monitor control. At high level, risk management is accomplished by balancing risk exposure against mitigation costs and implementing appropriate countermeasures and controls.

rm-process

Risk assessment states the security posture of an organization at a given point in time. Therefore organization should conduct risk assessment of their assets on a regular basis. Risk assessment looks at the impact and likelihood of threat/ vulnerability pair to assess the risk. What is the likelihood of a threat to exploit a given vulnerability and what will be the impact of the threat if the given vulnerability is exploited. If either likelihood/impact is low, the overall risk is low.

Performing vulnerability assessment of critical assets on monthly basis is highly recommend to find out new vulnerabilities and making sure the hardened systems configuration have not changed. Also any changes introduced to a system will require checking the necessary system configurations are intact.

A Five-step Roadmap to HIPAA Security Compliance

Related videos by youtube
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Srhrow67f8

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Tags: Health care, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Identity Theft, Risk management, Security, Security Risk Assessment, United States Department of Health and Human Services

2 Responses to “HIPAA accountability and security program”

  1. terminsurance says:

    This is good news indeed. Keep up the good work, the good attitude towards the needy citizenry.

  2. Insurance Leads says:

    Good news … Australia has good a health system with medicare and healthcare cards for the un-employed and top notch public hospitals …

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