A HIPAA working group seeks to ease the implementation of the massive data controls that are required by standard HIPAA Security provisions.
Computerworld magazine:
A working group made up of members from three organizations plans this month to release guidelines for complying with the data security requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
The clock is ticking for health care companies to comply with HIPAA’s security provisions, which will take effect in April. The Healthcare Security Workgroup began developing the compliance guidelines in November 2003 and was originally supposed to release them around the middle of this year. But the complexity of pulling the needed information together delayed the project, said Devin Jopp, chief operating officer at URAC, a nonprofit accreditation agency for the health care industry. “It’s taken a lot of lifting,” Jopp said. “It was ambitious, but the group has finally been able to put it together.”The Healthcare Security Workgroup includes representatives from Washington-based URAC, the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) in Reston, Va., and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Full article: Group Polishes Guidelines on HIPAA Security Rules