May 16, 2012
news
Stephen Fletcher, executive director of the Utah Dept. of Technology Services (DTS), has resigned from his post as a result of a hacker accessing the medical information of 780,000 Medicaid recipients within the state. The announcement was made by Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert, who also outlined the State's response to the recent health and Medicaid data breach.
April 19, 2012
news
On the heels of the Medicaid data server hack in Utah, the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (SCDHHS) recently discovered that a Medicaid employee inappropriately transferred personal information for 228,435 Medicaid beneficiaries to his personal email account. This incident, the agency says, constitutes a violation of agency policy.
April 19, 2012 John DeGaspari
article
More hospitals are looking to the cloud as a viable way to store clinical, imaging, and financial data. Experts acknowledge its advantages, but caution it’s a step that requires careful planning and vetting of potential cloud vendors.
April 13, 2012
news
The original data breach, as first reported by Utah Department of Technology Services (DTS), of the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) data server is worse than originally thought, according to the DTS. The DTS originally said 24,000 Medicaid claims had been accessed; however, it’s now saying 255,000 had their Social Security numbers listed in data stolen by thieves from a computer server last week and approximately 500,000 other victims had “less-sensitive personal information” stolen.
April 12, 2012
news
According to a new report from the Chicago-based research arm of the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS), HIMSS Analytics, a focus on the regulations and guidelines governing data security in the healthcare are not resulting in increased security. The study, called The 2012 HIMSS Analytics Report: Security of Patient Data, says there is a rise in data breaches over the last six years even with tight regulatory activity and compliance surrounding reporting and auditing procedures.
April 12, 2012 Gabriel Perna
article
When it comes down to why the Albany, Ga.-based Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, a 450-bed community-based hospital, decided to implement a single sign-on (SSO) solution, the reason wasn’t complex or profound. Quite simply, as Phoebe Putney Memorial director of tech services, Michael Elder, puts it, the hospital’s physicians were dealing with multiple log-in passwords from various different systems, even within its EHR from McKesson Corp. (San Francisco, Calif.).
April 5, 2012
news
According to theUtah Department of Technology Services (DTS), the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) data server was breached. The server, which houses Medicaid claims, appears to have taken place on Friday, March 30, according to the DTS. During the breach, information was accessed from approximately 24,000 claims.
April 5, 2012 John DeGaspari
blog
With the digitization of medical records, there has been a lot of interest lately in storing information on the cloud. But storing data on the cloud—particularly clinical data—also presents risks to the hospital, which is legally responsible for the data it stores on the cloud is safe. That’s a tall order, and there are plenty of potential pitfalls to avoid when negotiating a contract with a cloud vendor. “The cloud is great, but the trick is that the customer doesn’t have control of the data, and yet they are still responsible for it,” says Diana J.P. McKenzie, partner and chair, Information Technology and Outsourcing Group, Hunter, Maclean, Exley & Dunn, P.C., Savannah, Ga.
March 29, 2012 John DeGaspari
blog
Cloud computing is becoming a valuable tool for hospitals, and there are good reasons for that, as more organizations digitize their clinical systems. I recently had a conversation with Richard Temple, executive consultant at Beacon Partners, Inc., Weymouth, Mass.
Typically, a lot of the computerization by hospitals has centered on financial systems, and hospitals typically wanted to keep that information close, housing it in their own data centers, he says. But things were more manageable, in terms of what needed to be available. After all, if a billing system went down at night, lives didn’t hang in the balance. But with the advent of the computerization of clinical systems, hospitals are faced with requirements of uptime and redundancy. “Hospitals aren’t necessarily geared up to support a computing infrastructure of that magnitude, so they look to the cloud,” Temple says.
March 28, 2012
news
Washington D.C.-based Howard University Hospital has sent a notification to nearly 35,000 of its patients on a potential disclosure of their protected health information (PHI) that occurred in late January when a former contractor’s personal laptop containing patient information was stolen. The laptop, stolen from the former contractor’s vehicle, was password protected, according to Howard University Hospital.
March 21, 2012
news
The Augusta, Ga.-based Georgia Health Sciences University has announced a breach in its research medical school that affects 513 patients. The breach occurred when there was a theft of a laptop computer that may have contained some of the patients’ personal information.
March 15, 2012
news
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee (BCBST) will pay $1.5 million to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules, according to Leon Rodriguez, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
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