Just when you may be thinking that your compliance and security needs are taken care of, here comes another thing to worry about: The HIPAA Compliance Audit Program. HIPAA Audits will be taken upon accordance with Section 13411 of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) to ensure that covered [...]

Starting in 2011, all medical providers, including physicians, clinics, surgery centers and hospitals that can demonstrate “meaningful use” of health information systems in compliance with new government regulations, are eligible to recover $44,000 to $2.0 Million of their IT investment from the government. Alternately healthcare providers face civil penalties up to $50,000 for willful neglect [...]

You may be thinking that your organization is completely shielded from security threats, and that a breach of any sort in any organization, is a rarity. But the fact is that health information breaches are no longer one-off incidents. They are much more frequent than we tend to imagine. About 385 [...]

Although occurring at varying degrees, data breaches are now more frequent than ever before. The TRICARE breach which is the largest ever since the HIPAA notification rule came into effect, has been in the news for quite some time now. Affecting 4.9 million beneficiaries of the military healthcare program, this breach attracted immediate and stringent [...]

If you are a small business with less than 500 employees, you are likely to be a target for information thefts. Hackers are increasingly targeting small organizations, as they are easier prey due to inadequate security infrastructure. A recent mid-November (2011) Research by Symantec “shows that at least 40 percent of all targeted attacks aimed [...]

In yet another breach incident, Sutter Health, an integrated delivery system, reported theft of a desktop device during the weekend of Oct 15 and 16. Sutter Health was in the process of encrypting all desktop computers when one of the devices yet to be encrypted, was stolen from an administrative office of Sutter Medical Foundation, [...]

You may have been doing a lot to ensure information security and compliance in your organization. But that´s really not enough- because it´s now time to prove your compliance with security and breach notification rules, to the OCR audit team. The audit protocols were developed by KPMG under the $9 million contract which was [...]

Neglecting or not complying with HIPAA rules is sure to attract enormous penalties. Proof of this, is the massive $4.9 billion lawsuit filed against TRICARE for compromising health information of the beneficiaries of TRICARE military health program. The breach occurred when unencrypted backup tapes were stolen from the car of an employee of Science Applications [...]

Does the term ‘OCR Investigation’ send shivers down your spine? Well, if so, you’re definitely not alone. Every healthcare entity today faces multiple challenges with regard to information security and compliance. Incidents of data breach have become more frequent with increased use of mobile devices like laptops, smart phones, and portable storage devices like USB [...]

Protecting sensitive data is certainly not as simple as we may imagine- and yet another incident of data theft demonstrates this beyond any doubt. In what is reported to be the largest data breach incident since the HIPAA breach notification rule came into effect, the Defense Department’s TRICARE healthcare program, which serves active duty troops [...]