Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), Community Health Centers (CHCs) and related entities are non-profit organizations that run on shoestring budgets. These organizations are constantly in search of revenue, grants and donations to keep their operations running. Therefore, any type of adverse financial event will be devastating. However, these organizations also must comply with relevant regulations,...
When you think of being a patient in the hospital, the last thing you may think about is the safety of your personal data. According to research findings by Michigan State University, the security of your personal information in U.S. hospitals is something to be concerned over. An article on UPI explores the study, showing...
Social media has become an incredibly valuable tool, whether for personal or business use, the need and desire to use social media has increased dramatically since it first stepped on the scene. Historically, medical professionals have steered clear from social media in fear that they may violate HIPAA guidelines. Today, medical professionals cannot deny the...
According to an article over on tripwire, a covered entity is facing serious penalties after the Office for Civil Rights issued them a hefty fine for their failure to comply with audit procedures including review, modification and termination of users’ access. In the scope of the investigation, it was discovered that more than 100,000 individuals...
HealthIT Security has a very good article on OCR HIPAA activities. A key message is that not all OCR complaints result in HIPAA violations OCR will continue to focus “its enforcement efforts and its resources” in areas of alleged non-compliance and “where corrective action under HIPAA may be the only remedy.” In terms of OCR...
In a clear message to healthcare organizations, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR), fined Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island (WIH) for not having updated HIPAA Business Associate Agreements. WIH provided OCR with a business associate agreement with Care New England Health System effective March 15, 2005,...
Almost all software programs have bugs in their code. The bugs may be security holes, problems displaying pages on mobile devices or inaccurately displaying results in reports to name a few. So it should be no shock that electronic health record (EHR) systems would have bugs as well. EHRs are complex software programs and are...
Back in March, we reported that OCR had announced its Phase 2 Audit Program. When we last heard from OCR about Phase 2 HIPAA Audits, we saw that emails were being sent to Covered Entities and Business Associates. The purpose of the emails was to verify and expand the OCR HIPAA audit pool. We wrote...
Back in March, we reported that OCR had announced its Phase 2 Audit Program. OCR stated that they would compile a database of both Covered Entities and Business Associates to form the basis of the pool of organizations potentially targeted for audit. They have followed up on their intentions and in the last week organizations...
Watch HSN CEO discuss the next round of HIPAA Audits
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