5 HIPAA Lessons From the Anthem Cyber Attack
Another major hack has come to light. Anthem, Inc. was the victim of a cyber attack. They reported that no patient health records have been compromised, but they think Social Security Numbers, addresses, and policy numbers were revealed. This is a nightmare for...
HIPAA Privacy Officer—Your Quarterback for HIPAA Compliance
The past 2 weeks, I’ve been guest blogging with our friends NueMD with help from Daniel Brown, Esq. with Taylor English LLP. We have discussed 8 Ways HIPAA Has Changed with the Omnibus Ruling, and 5 Steps for Implementing a Successful HIPAA Compliance Plan. Also, I...
7 Reasons You Need Annual HIPAA Retraining
The HIPAA Law states that Covered Entities, Business Associates and Business Associate Subcontractors must train all its workforce members on HIPAA.1 The Law doesn’t give us guidance on the frequency of HIPAA Training, so is one time training enough? I DON’T THINK SO!...
Is an Audit Trail Enough For HIPAA Compliance?
A client posed this question, and I decided it would be a great opportunity to clarify how you communicate securely with your clients when using encrypted email and the like. When reviewing the capabilities of a file-sharing program with a client, they stated they met...
New Ruling on HIPAA Results in Doctor Being Sued, What’s Next?
An interesting ruling from the Connecticut Supreme Court came down this past week. The justices ruled that a woman can sue her doctor for negligence if the physician violates regulations that dictate how practices must maintain patient confidentiality as outlined...
California and a Whole Lot of Breaching Going On
In 2013, the California healthcare sector had a bad year! They were responsible for 15% of the breaches by industry and 6% of the total number of records breached… 6%, that’s not so bad for total numbers, right? I mean the retail sector had 15.6 million records...
Why Ebola News isn’t a HIPAA Privacy Violation
These are some scary times – right now there is a huge outbreak of the Ebola virus in Africa (just in case you were living under a rock), and our first case was diagnosed in Dallas, TX. Wait, isn’t the release of this information a HIPAA Violation? Well...
Guest Blog: Meet the HIPAA Police
This is another great guest blog from our friends at GRA Benefits: The HIPAA police, a.k.a. the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), are happy to meet you if you do any one or more of the following things: Do not encrypt your email Let a hacker access your...