Posts Tagged ‘HITECH Act’

Statistics on HHS published breaches affecting 500 or more individuals per HITECH requirements, more than 1 million affected individuals

HHS publishing healthcare breaches

From September 2009 through January 2010 there were 36 breaches affecting an estimated 1,073,657 individuals reported to the HHS. Here are some statistics:

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Where were the breaches?

• 28% in California
• 11% in Michigan
• 11% in Texas
• 8% in DC
• 8% in Illinois
• 33% in 10 other states

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How many individuals were estimated to be affected?

• 47% in Tennesee (506,400)
• 33% in Florida (349,000)
• 8% in New York (83,000)
• 4% in California (48,283)
• 7% in other states (76,974)

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What were the types of breaches?

• Theft was involved with 74% of the breaches making up 90% of the number of individuals affected
• Unauthorized access was involved with 20% of the breaches making up 4% of the individuals
• The other types (Loss, Mailing, Hacking/IT Incident, Misdirected Email, Phishing) were involved with 19% of the breaches making up 9% of the individuals

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Where was the information stored?

• Laptops were involved with 22% of the breaches affecting 36% of the individuals
• Desktop computers were involved with 17% of the breaches affecting 3% of the individuals
• Portable electronic devices were involved with 8% of the breaches affected 3% of the individuals
• Hard drives were involved with 1% of the breaches affected 47% of the individuals
• Post cards were involved with 1% of the breaches affected 8% of the individuals
• Other locations were: mailings, backup tapes, CD's, Electronic Medical Record systems, Paper Records, Films, Network Servers and Email.

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More details in the post.

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Two weeks to “HIPAA v2″ rules

"HIPAA v2" goes into effect in about weeks due to the HITECH Act.

• Feb 17: Business Associates must comply with HIPAA Security
• Feb 18: New restrictions on healthcare providers honoring patient requests to restrict disclosure of PHI to health plans
• Feb 22: Enforcement of the breach notification rule begins

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New power for AG’s: Civil action for HITECH/HIPAA.

Two Data Security Breaches Give State Attorneys General a Chance to Exercise Their New HIPAA Powers. State AG's now have the authority to investigate and levy fines for HIPAA/HITECH.

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Unencrypted laptop stolen at GMH

Laptop stolen at Guam Memorial Hospital. Laptop stolen from locked office. 2,000 records of employee information stored unencrypted including dates of physical exams, TB and Hepatitis status.

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Health Net : 1.5 million records

Security breach may have affected 1.5 million patient records

• California based Health Net
• Lost an external hard drive six months ago that was not encrypted
• Patient records from multiple states include New York, Connecticut, Arizona and New Jersey.
• Attorney General is investigating, including the time it took to report the incident
• Free credit monitoring for two years will be offered to those effected

Full article: Health Net healthcare data breach affects1.5 million

Two way street for HIPAA monitoring

Both parties in contracts will soon be required to police each other. HITECH toughens the notification rules. If the doctor or the business associate becomes aware of actions that constitute a breach, action must be taken.

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HITECH – A disaster waiting to happen?

...Information security in the healthcare industry is woefully inadequate, and the industry is highly unprepared to deal with the massive changes that are needed adapt to HITECH and new HIPAA provisions, according to security experts and recent studies...

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Healthcare may not be ready for security challenges

With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act underway, healthcare organizations face new challenges to maintain privacy and security of patient health data. However, data gathered from healthcare IT and security professionals indicate that many organizations may not be ready to meet some of the HITECH components of the ARRA legislation and other security challenges, according to the results of the 2009 HIMSS Security Survey, sponsored by Symantec Corp.

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