I get a bit irritated when I see a vendor touting their “compliance solution” products as making organizations “HIPAA Compliant” or “PCI DSS Compliant” or whatever your regulation of choice happens to be, and then, upon inspection of their products, see that they are just taking something they already had, slapping some marketing language into the description, picking a few of the regulatory requirements that their product may do (fully or partially) and then calling it a “compliance solution.”
Posts Tagged ‘patient privacy’
You Need These Things When You Get HIPAA Audited!
Friday, August 7th, 2009OCR Adding To Staff For Increased HIPAA Compliance Enforcement Activities
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009Monday the HHS announced they were moving responsibility for both HIPAA Security Rule and Privacy Rule under the OCR.
That same day they also announced they were expanding the HIPAA “privacy enforcement team.” (Scroll down on this page to see the full verbiage of the announcement.)
HIPAA Enforcement Will Improve With OCR Responsible for Both Privacy Rule & Security Rule
Monday, August 3rd, 2009Today the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the OCR will now be responsible for both the HIPAA Privacy Rule and the Security Rule.
Perhaps this is an indicator of more enforcement to come. As a quick review…
(Lack Of) Encryption Is A Basis For Notification Under The HITECH Act
Friday, July 31st, 2009This week one of my tweeps asked me the following: “What’s your interpretation of encryption obligations for PHI data-at-rest under HITECH? Many parties are sweating this now.” Great question!
Healthcare Worker Gets 1 Year In Prison For Posting HIV Victim’s Medical Records On Internet
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009Today a report discussed how a healthcare worker obtained medical information about a patient with HIV that was then posted on the Internet…
HITECH Act does *NOT* make HIPAA, or HIPAA advice, “obsolete”!
Monday, May 18th, 2009A couple of weeks ago I was surprised and concerned by a statement made in one of my many listservs by a lawyer commenting on HIPAA books and past advice given for HIPAA compliance…
Most Laws Are Flawed, But It Is Up To Us To Make Them Better & Make Them Work
Friday, March 6th, 2009Rafal Los makes some very good points in his post “Analysis of the Stimulus Bill and Healthcare Privacy” from a few days ago. I started writing all my thoughts as a comment to him, but then decided it would work well as a blog post…
HIPAA & Calling Out Full Names In Waiting Rooms
Monday, March 2nd, 2009Over the years I have done several interviews for articles about HIPAA compliance. I recently did an interview for an HCPro article, “Physician offices: Tackle a different set of privacy training challenges.” (Sorry, this is not publicly posted to my knowledge.)
Well, today I received a message about this article from a clearly agitated reader, whose name (of course) I am not including in the following message…
Report on Healthcare Provider HIPAA Progress
Monday, February 23rd, 2009Here’s an interesting report from URAC about healthcare providers and HIPAA compliance progress…
HIPAA Violation: Medical Clinic Leaves Box With PHI On Public Dumpster
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008This summer I had planned to do a dumpster-diving project with my sons, but then the Iowa floods postponed those plans. However, after reading the following I’m motivated to plan to do this in the spring after basketball and G&T activities are finished for the winter…
