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U.S. organizations continue to experience increased costs from data breaches, according to a recent study from the consulting firm Ponemon Institute. The average organizational cost of a data breach increased nearly 2 percent, from $6.65 million in 2008 to $6.75 million in 2009.
Written by Gina Narcisi
Organizations should act prior to the implementation of the new (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) HIPAA compliance guideline changes for 2010 and consistently monitor their facilities in order to make an easier transition and avoid the extended penalties that are now being proposed, said HIPAA privacy and security consult Grant Peterson during a Jan. 13 Webinar on the guidelines.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a final rule requiring certain Web-based personal health record (PHR) vendors to notify consumers when the security of their electronic health information has been breached.
University of California San Diego's (UCSD) Moores Cancer Center has sent a letter to 30,000 patients, after a hacker breached its computers and gained access to patients' personal information, according to a report in the San Diego Union Tribune.
The University of California (UC) Berkeley began notifying students, alumni and others on May 8 that their personal information may have been stolen after learning in April that hackers had accessed restricted computer databases in its health services center.
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Security company SecureWorks recently reported that attempted hacker attacks aimed at its healthcare clients doubled in the fourth quarter of 2009 from an average of 6,500 per healthcare client per day in the first nine months of 2009 to an average of 13,400 per client per day in the last three months of 2009.
The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) has begun re-evaluating its security policies after a laptop containing sensitive BCBSA data concerning physicians was stolen in August from an employee’s car.
New regulations requiring healthcare providers, health plans and other HIPAA-covered entities to notify an individual when their health information is breached were issued Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Hospital in Bellflower, Calif., has been fined $250,000 for unauthorized employee access to the medical records of Nadya Suleman, the woman who gave birth to octuplets in January this year.
While Virginia state officials said there is no evidence that personal information was stolen by hackers who accessed a computer system that collects data on approximately 8.3 million patients, the State Police and the FBI have launched a formal investigation into the matter.
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The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.