HIPAA Blog - Page 29

Meaningful Use Requirements for Patient Data

While many covered entities use electronic medical systems instead of recording patient data with pen-and-paper, information recording via electronic medical records is much faster. The Medicaid EHR incentive program has been put into place to help motivate healthcare providers to better utilize the capabilities of these systems. “Meaningful Use” is a legal term that refers... Continue reading

Preparing for ICD-10 as a HIPAA Compliant Organization

On January 15th, 2009, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the final rules mandating the adoption of the ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision). Originally, October 1st, 2014 was to be the date that compliance with the latest revision of the medical transaction code set (ICD-10 was mandatory. However, a new... Continue reading

Understanding PIPEDA Data Protection for IT Pros

Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is the Canadian law that serves as the rulebook on data privacy. In some regards, PIPEDA has many parallels with HIPAA in terms of the way that it mandates certain handling of electronic health information. However, PIPEDA does not concern primarily with protected health information (PHI), as... Continue reading

Managed Services for HIPAA Hosting

Often when purchasing hosting services and online space, the product is similar between providers. Many hosting providers use the same virtualization technologies and differ only in their implementations and the physical hardware used to house the virtualized environments. What does differ drastically between providers is the quality and array of managed services offered. In many... Continue reading

Largest Patient Breach Blamed on Chinese Hacker Group

On Monday, August 18th, Community Health Systems (CHS) reported that it had been the victim of a cyber attack from a Chinese hacking group named “APT 18”, a group alleged to have ties to the Chinese government. APT 18 successfully stole a large quantity of PHI data, including social security numbers, contact information, and other... Continue reading

Strengthening IT Security for HIPAA Compliance

Per the Health Insurance of Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (otherwise known as HIPAA) Security Rule, a number of “technical safeguards” combined with the physical security of the computer systems that store and interact with protected health information (PHI) make up the bulk of what is required in order to fall within the realm... Continue reading