Leon Rodriquez the head of OCR, in an interview, stated that the 150 HIPAA audits is just a pilot program. OCR recently hired the consulting firm KPMG to launch a HIPAA compliance audit program, with 150 audits anticipated by the end of 2012. Because this is the first time the office is conducting audits, the...
Howard Anderson, Executive Editor over at HealthcareInfoSecurity.com had an insightful interview with Leon Rodriguez, the new director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights. Rodriquez a former prosecutor and defense lawyer talks about his priorities as the head of OCR. He states: Making enforcement a priority (because) enforcement promotes compliance...
Every day we work with Practice Administrators (PAs) to help them with HIPAA compliance. It is amazing how much responsibility is placed on a PA’s plate. They are involved with hiring and firing of employees, billing, scheduling, personnel issues, insurance issues, patient issues, equipment issues, technology issues, provider issues and compliance issues. It is amazing...
It seems that every day it becomes more and more clear that the government is planning on enforcing HIPAA regulations. Patient data privacy and security is becoming their priority. This could have to do with the fact that almost 8 million patients have had their data breached over the past 2 years. And considering that...
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that they have awarded a $9.2 million contract to the consulting firm KPMG. KPMG will develop the process and perform HIPAA audits. There will be an estimated 150 onsite audits by the end of 2012. The audits are a requirement under the HITECH act and have...
According to a report to Congress from The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), there have been almost 8 million records breached since 2009. That is a staggering number. What is worse it that the number of data breaches continues to increase. Another way of looking at it is that we are only in...
One of the most important aspects of complying with the HIPAA Security Rule is to perform a risk assessment to evaluate how an organization is protecting patient data. The results of the risk assessment provide a playbook for how additional protections can lower the risk to patient information. Let’s take a closer look at the...
In a very embarrassing and ironic turn of events, KPMG announced that they had a data breach that involved 4,500 patient records. KPMG has been selected by The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to perform HIPAA compliance audits. So it appears that the company that will do HIPAA audits has experienced a HIPAA related data...
Health Info Security has published the transcript from an interview with Susan McAndrew of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights. The article is very good and should be read in its entirety. Below are some of the key points. When asked if business associates as well as covered entities will...
Susan McAndrew, deputy director of The HHS Office of Civil Rights (OCR) gives a very insightful interview to Howard Anderson, Executive Editor, HealthcareInfoSecurity.com. There are a lot of good points and I suggest reading the whole interview. I will point out a few of the highlights. When asked about who will be audited, McAndrew was...
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