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Health Law

HIPAA Health Law & Technology

Legal developments, issues, and other pertinent information relating the creation, use, and exchange of health information. Topics include EHRs and PHRs; HIEs, RHIOs, and EHR networks; privacy and security; breaches; and recent legislation.
By Helen Oscislawski

Post Frequency: 0.9/day

Last Entry: March 16, 2011 at 16:47:50

New Year, New Laws . . . Some Items to Watch In 2008

Posted on January 04, 2008
What the HIPSA?!! After HIPAA, the last thing most of us want to hear is another acronym that starts with the letter "H" and makes our heads spin trying to figure out whether the answer to the question is "to disclose, or not to disclose...

Ho-Ho-Ho...Contractor Hired to Audit the Naughty

Posted on December 11, 2007
HcPro reports that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has contracted with Pricewaterhouse Coopers to conduct security audits of covered entities, according to Karen Trudel, deputy director of CMS' Office of E-Health Standards and Services...

Is There Proof in the EHR Pudding?

Posted on November 02, 2007
On October 30, 2007, Secretary Mike Leavitt of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced on HHS.gov a five-year demonstration project that will encourage small to medium-sized physician practices to adopt electronic health records (EHRs)...

Employees suspended for snooping about George Clooney

Posted on October 15, 2007
Last week, WCBS-TV in New York reported that as many as two dozen employees, including doctors and nurses, have been suspended for allegedly improperly accessing actor George Clooney's medical records. As the story goes, employees not involved with the actor's care logged into the hospital's computer system to view his records as doctors tended to his injuries, and that a security guard released a Clooney family member's telephone number...

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Microsoft launches website for managing personal health information

Posted on October 05, 2007
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that Microsoft Corp. launched "HealthVault," a website designed to allow patients to store and manage their medical and health information, and which is described by Microsoft as "part filing cabinet, part library, and part fax machine for an individual's or a family's medical records and notes...

Is the HIPAA Enforcement Tide Turning?

Posted on August 15, 2007
Final regulations setting forth how the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) should enforce HIPAA became effective back in March of 2006. As of the end of August 2007, there have been 29,994 complaints filed with the government alleging violations of privacy...

Reports Find Security & Privacy Variations in State Health Data Exchanges

Posted on August 10, 2007
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released a series of reports funded by AHRQ and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT which examine the variations in data privacy and security among 34 regional health information organizations...

New York Unveils Plan for Statewide Health IT Program

Posted on August 09, 2007
Yet another state has jumped on the RHIO/HIE bandwagon . . . Government Technology reports that New York Health Commissioner Richard Daines announced today the launch of a statewide health IT program, which will include an initial $106 million investment to help health care facilities adopt IT tools in 2007 and 2008...

EMR Adoption Concerns

Posted on August 08, 2007
Concerns continue to mount regarding the recent IRS memorandum declaring that nonprofit hospitals can share their e-health record software and support with physicians without losing their tax-exempt status. A recent report from Leerink Swann & Company contends that a heightened competitive environment in urban areas will be the result of the memorandum declaration, as hospitals vie to attract surgery and other hospital-based procedures...

Study Shows EMR System Can Pay For Itself Within 2 Years

Posted on August 07, 2007
According to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS), electronic health record (EHR) systems can potentially imbue enough cost reduction to pay for the cost of the system in under two years' time! Despite growing enthusiasm and awareness of the benefits to patients, physicians have been slow to adopt EHRs often citing cost as an major obstacle to implementing an EHR...

Rhode Island To Build First-Ever Statewide HIE

Posted on August 01, 2007
The California Health Care Foundation reported in its iHealthBeat publication today that Rhode Island's Department of Health has awarded a three-year, $1.7 million contract to EDS to design, implement and manage the country's first statewide electronic health record network...

August 6, 2007 - New Jersey RHIO Planning Discussion Forum

Posted on July 30, 2007
***Interested parties must register with TESC in order to attend ****When: Monday August 6, 2007 from 9:00-12:00. Where: Thomas Edison State College, Prudence Hall, 101 West State Street, Trenton, NJ Topic: NJ RHIO Discussion Forum to share findings, conclusions and recommendations based upon information collected regarding the level of interest in a statewide health information exchange and the degree of economic commitment needed for sustainability...

California County Working on EHR Exchange

Posted on July 30, 2007
A three-year, $1.5 million federal grant is helping Kern County, California to begin building the infrastructure necessary for an electronic health record system, reports the Antelope Valley Press. The Tehachapi Valley Health Care District, which operates rural health clinics in Mojave, California City and Tehachapi, in addition to Tehachapi Hospital, has created and designated the "East Kern County Integrated Technology Association" to be the hub for the EHR database...

Security Breach Affects Private Information of Over 800,000 Individuals

Posted on July 27, 2007
Information technology and processing vendor SAIC recently announced on its website www.saic.com that a data security beach placed protected information of about 867,000 individuals at risk for compromise. SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) is a Fortune 500® company and the contractor for the TRICARE military health program...

Legislators Introduce New Privacy Law

Posted on July 24, 2007
As more and more providers and other stakeholders in the health care sector move towards using the electronic medium as their preferred method to store and exchange patients' health information, there is growing concern that HIPAA does not adequately assure that patients' privacy will be maintained...

Health Experts Say Privacy Rules Needed for e-Health Records

Posted on July 19, 2007
Do we really need more rules to protect health information? Certain health experts seem to think so. Dr. Deborah Peel, a psychiatrist and founder of Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, believes that "thousands" of electronic databases that contain patients' health records exist, and that those patients don't have any way to keep their personal information from being shared with third parties...

State Laws Require Notification of Data Breaches

Posted on July 11, 2007
The media loves to report horror stories about privacy breaches that result in voluminous amounts of private health information being disclosed. There were numerous reports of privacy breaches in 2006 and there will certainly be more in 2007...

Courts Begin Allowing Plaintiffs To Use HIPAA as Standard in Privacy Suits

Posted on July 07, 2007
The National Law Journal reported in its June 2007 issue that The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is raising new legal fears for health care providers concerning privacy suits. Labor and employment attorneys are concerned that courts have begun to let plaintiffs use HIPAA standards to prove liability in privacy suits, even though the law doesn't currently provide a private right of action...

Insurance Companies Finalize Plans to Post Electronic Health Records On The Internet

Posted on July 06, 2007
Hartford Business Journal recently reported that privacy groups are sounding alarms as the nation’s largest insurance companies finalize plans to allow millions more customers to post their health records on the Internet. Insurers like Hartford-based Aetna Inc...

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