HIPAA

Like many large health systems, the Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare is responsible for maintaining large and growing volumes of data. That is an important challenge, but not a new one, according to Don Franklin, Intermountain’s assistant vice president of infrastructure and operations, who notes that the 22-hospital health system currently manages about 4.7 petabytes of data. “This is not a new phenomenon for us. Intermountain is well known for its data analytics, for its massive amount of data and for managing that data,” he says.

Compliance for the HIPAA Omnibus Rule is fast approaching and the provisions surrounding the relationship between covered entities and business associates have been a hot topic and for many health IT leaders, a bit of a mystery. In a recent talk I had with Mac McMillan, I tried to understand why this was the case.

Sept. 23, the compliance deadline for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Omnibus Rule, is getting closer and closer. In this Healthcare Informatics podcast, our health IT privacy guru, Mac McMillan, goes into detail about what providers should know when it comes to complying with the regulatory measure.

As the Sept. 23 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Omnibus Rule compliance date approaches, the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), a non-profit standards development organization and accrediting body, has announced the adoption of new program criteria that supports this legislation.

Affinity Health Plan, a New York-based managed care plan, will pay more than $1.2 million in HIPAA violations after a photocopier containing confidential medical information was compromised, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).