New cybersecurity legislation to amend the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act – an analysis of H.R. 7898

New legislation was passed by Congress and signed by the president on January 5, 2021 that amends the HITECH Act with an additional section titled: SEC. 13412. RECOGNITION OF SECURITY PRACTICES.1...

New cybersecurity legislation to amend the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act – an analysis of H.R. 7898

New legislation was passed by Congress and signed by the president on January 5, 2021 that amends the HITECH Act with an additional section titled: SEC. 13412. RECOGNITION OF SECURITY PRACTICES. The fundamental driver for amending HITECH is to ensure the secretary of Health and Human Services HHS...

Breach at Third Party Contractor Affects 18,000 Anthem Members

A month after it agreed to settle 2015’s massive data breach, Anthem Inc., the United States’ largest healthcare company, has a new problem on its hands. The Indianapolis-based company began notifying 18,000 members affected by another unrelated data breach last week. Anthem reported the breach o...

Final HITECH Act Stage 3 Meaningful Use Rules May Require Annual Risk Analysis plus a Risk Management Component

The comments are in and the HHS is scrambling to review them all before they issue the final Stage 3 Meaningful Use rules later this summer. Comments from entities such as CHIME and HIMSS represent good news and bad news for healthcare providers, depending on how you look at it. The HIPAA Securit...

What you need to know from the OCR’s Report to Congress on Breaches and HIPAA Rules Compliance

Last week the HHS Office for Civil Rights OCR issued their Annual Report to Congress on Breaches of Unsecured Protected Health Information PHI for calendar years 2011 and 2012. This is their second annual report required by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health HITECH...

Electronic Health Records and Meaningful Use: Protecting Electronic Health Information

Since 2009, healthcare providers and other companies providing services to the healthcare industry have been mobilizing to take advantage of government incentives to implement Electronic Health Records or EHRs. These incentives were established by federal law as a part of the HITECH Act of 2009,...

Viruses and Vendors Can Put Healthcare Data At Risk

A recent article in Healthcare Security Info highlights that computer viruses can cause security breaches, that can then in turn compromise health care data and potentially violate the HIPAA and HITECH Act regulations. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston had to notify more than 2,000...

HIPAA Bares Its Teeth: $4.3m Fine For Privacy Violation

The health care industry’s toothless tiger finally bared its teeth, as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a $4.3 m fine to a Maryland health care provider for violations of the HIPAA Privacy Rule. The action is the first monetary fine issued since the Act was passed in 1996...

Andy Jaquith on Measuring Meaningful Information Security Metrics

The March issue of Information Security magazine is out this week. The cover story is a look at how security information management systems need to evolve, in particular by integrating identity management with SIM in order to tie policy violations to user activity. Also, expert Andrew Jaquith...