Archive for the ‘Electronic Medical Records’ Category


ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD THEFT RISES

Monday, September 13th, 2010

EMR

A recent report jointly issued by the United States Secret Service and the Verizon Business RISK team states that cyber attacks on medical record systems increased substantially in 2009, and will probably continue to increase in the future.

Recent data from the Office for Civil Rights of the federal Health and Human Services Department shows that in 2010 to date, over 150 health care entities have reported EMR breaches affecting more that 4 million patients altogether.

The Secret Service/Verizon report lists a number of causes for hundreds of breach events, ranging from external hacking to social tactics to internal fraud and abuse. The number one cause of all data breaches? Stolen credentials. InterComputer’s core technologies, including patent-pending electronic identity and role/authority provisioning, eliminate the problem of stolen credentials.

InterComputer’s Secure EMR Exchange solution systematically eliminates those causes and delivers automated regulatory and legal protection for hospitals, doctors, and insurers. This solution is the only solution carrying underwritten insurance coverage in case of any system malfunction or cybercrime.

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NEW FEDERAL LAW EXPANDS HEALTH INFORMATION SECURITY REQUIREMENTS

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) expands the privacy protections for health information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

On April 17, 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released guidance on technologies and methodologies for securing legally protected health information (PHI), which takes effect immediately.

Until now, HIPAA’s privacy and security requirements applied only to health care providers, health insurance plans and health care clearinghouses. Now those requirements (and the penalties for non-compliance) also apply directly to third-party administrators and other vendors.

The act significantly increases civil penalties for violations. Maximum penalties are $10,000 per violation, with a cap of $250,000 for multiple violations during the calendar year. The penalties apply to all violations after the date of enactment. Health and Human Services will periodically audit covered entities and will investigate covered entities upon receiving a complaint.

Effective immediately, state attorneys general can bring civil actions in federal court against covered entities seeking injunctions against violations and can sue for damages on behalf of state residents.

InterComputer’s Trusted Health Information solution prevents the compromise of electronic identities and communications between health care providers, insurance companies, other vendors, and patients, and insure against losses and regulatory penalties from cybercrime of any kind.

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ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD SECURITY – HUGE CARROT, HUGE STICK

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies face intense pressure to electronify medical information and health histories. This pressure is comprised of both a very big stick and a very big carrot.

The stick comes in the form of proliferating state and Federal laws mandating the safekeeping of electronic medical records (EMR). Last year, the hospital that treated the mother and babies in the famous “Octomom” case was unable to prevent unauthorized access to their medical records by the hospital’s own employees. California regulators fined the Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower a total of $437,500 for failure to prevent just two instances of unauthorized access. Other prominent institutions, such as UCLA Medical Center, have suffered newsworthy failures to protect EMR information in the cases of Farah Fawcett, Britney Spears, Maris Shriver, and others. In addition to the financial damage such failures incur, hospitals are deeply concerned about the effects of adverse publicity on their reputation and about incurring big expenses in related legal actions.

The carrot comes in the form of a huge Federal earmark for $19 billion in stimulus money to incent the development and implementation of electronic medical records (EMR) technology.

InterComputer is working within the health care industry to address two major market requirements:

1. The need to control access to EMR in compliance with applicable Federal and state laws
2. The need to securely communicate and exchange documents among hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies

The InterComputer InterOperating System (IOS) is fully compatible with all major EMR solutions and applications and fully insured against loss due to cybercrime of any kind within the system. Its advanced user identity, authority delegation management, and secure messaging technologies, can absolutely prevent the kind of incidents that have proved so costly to Kaiser’s bottom line. IOS also delivers automated compliance with both HIPAA and SarbOx regulatory requirements.

To learn more about InterComputer’s EMR capability, click here.

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