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Even with all the rules and safe guards supposedly in place to protect patients medical privacy, compliance is actually declining.

The association surveyed 1,117 hospitals and health systems, asking officials at the facilities about compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) rules. Although 91 percent said in 2005 that they were mostly compliant, that number dropped to 85 percent this year.

“A slight drop in the number of facilities reporting themselves to be fully or mostly compliant with HIPAA should serve as a warning to the industry that compliance should not be taken for granted,” AHIMA President Jill Callahan Dennis said in a written statement.

Source: Government Health

We all overhear confidential conversations we probably shouldn’t in various medical settings.

Sometimes, it’s inadvertent: through thin examination-room walls, through flimsy curtains between hospital beds.

Sometimes, it’s downright impossible *not* to hear details you shouldn’t. We’ve all seen those doctors who waltz into waiting rooms to divulge (very personal) information to a pateint’s family …and everyone else within earshot.

How is all this possible in the age of HIPAA and its many privacy provisions?

The answer lies here.

Basically, “the HIPAA Privacy Rule…does not require that all risk of incidental use or disclosure be eliminated to satisfy its standards.”

So, instead of trying to battle this problem, HIPAA simply concedes that it exists (”the potential exists for an individual’s health information to be disclosed incidentally”) and says, oh, well, can’t do anything about that…

I understand it’s a hard thing to fix, but still, shouldn’t HIPAA at least attempt to decrease the amount of incidental disclosure going on?

Source: PhillyBurbs

In March, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Ohio’s open records law overruled the protections for medical records under HIPAA. This decision is “possibly the first regarding a clash between states’ open records laws and HIPAA.”

The court case involved the Cincinnati Enquirer, which wanted the city to “hand over information regarding building owners who’d been cited for lead paint violations.” On March 17th, the Enquirer won: the Ohio Supreme Court “ruled unanimously that the Cincinnati Health Department was in the wrong when it used HIPAA’s privacy protections as an excuse not to provide the Enquirer with information on lead paint violations.”

Because many states have open records laws, so this outcome could “prove to be a landmark ruling should similar situations emerge in other locales.”

For more details, check out CIO Magazine.

Wireless LAN’s are convenient and allows for portablity. However they are very dangerous when it comes to security because even with a password, some technical individuals can still break their way through the encryption.

Siemens Communications Inc. has announced today that they have released a modular extention called HiPath Wireless Manager Advanced (HWMA) that will improve wireless security with intrusion detection and prevention.

“The Siemens HiPath Wireless Manager Advanced platform helps enterprises improve network efficiencies, prevent network attacks and respond to security challenges,” said Stefan Miesbach, CEO of the HiPath Wireless Division at Siemens. “The HWMA solution is also an important part of Siemens’ vision to make enterprise mobility easy – including enterprise data networking as well as the emerging need for unified on-the-go communication across all mobile and vertical business applications.”

Via Wireless IQ

All of health care was supposed to be following an HIPAA law passed in 1996. The deadline was 2003 and yet in 2006 only 80% of health care is doing what they are supposed to. Even worse, the numbers were the same in 2005 which means that many can’t or won’t make the changes.

Meanwhile, as of April 21, another wave of companies will have the chance to be noncompliant, as the deadline passes for companies with less than $5 million in revenue to meet HIPAA Security standards.

It’s not that health care companies find privacy and security technology hard to manage, said William “Buddy” Gillespie, vice president and CIO at WellSpan Health, which includes two hospitals; a home health care provider; a pharmacy; and about 40 physicians’ offices, managed care plans and other outpatient treatment facilities in Pennsylvania and Maryland.

Source: Eweek

Brabeion Software has updated their products with a new software called Brabeion Compliance Center 6.0. It allows users to keep up with regulatory compliance.

“With the addition of these regulatory modules, Chevron is better positioned to more proactively manage, deploy, and mitigate ongoing compliance efforts for SOX, HIPAA and other global regulatory requirements,” said Jay White, Global Information Protection Architect, Chevron. “Never before have we been able to implement easily and quickly such a comprehensive solution across our widely distributed information assets for compliance with external and internal regulations and security protocols.”

Brabeion Compliance Center is designed to significantly decrease the time and cost of implementing an IT compliance program, while providing unparalleled support for specific government and industry regulations. The solution includes modules for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), the Healthcare Information Privacy and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Federal Information Systems Management Act (FISMA), the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), California SB 1386 and NIST 800-53. Brabeion Software plans to launch additional modules later this year.

Source: Thomas Net

Configuresoft makes software that helps clients manage their technology and privacy concerns. This software can audit and monitor both your hardware and software allowing you to spend your time elsewhere. Configuresoft has now updated this already impressive software.

Colorado Springs-based ConfigureSoft has upgraded its Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM) software. The firm said yesterday that its latest version, 4.8, of its software tool adds a new dashboard capability, better support for operating system platforms, including new 64-bit Windows, and cross-platform toolkits for various compliance regulations. Configuresoft’s software is used for monitoring IT infrastructure for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), HIPAA, and other regulations.

Source: Tech Rockies

The CalRHIO has put out a list of of recommended data standards that is needed to have everything connected through out the State of California. This map is more like a guide for California health organizations as they move into the latest technology that is needed.

This map shows what the standard is at the moment and what the standard will be in the next six or more.

Nine areas are addressed: administration and finance, allergies, clinical documentation, imaging, immunization, laboratory, medication, services, and vocabulary.

Source: HIPAA Advisory

HDMCorp has many training series to teach you and your employees everything they need to know about HIPAA Compliance.

HIPAA established a set of rules governing privacy and confidentiality of health care information for covered entities under HIPAA. The federal government has mandated compliance and employees must complete HIPAA training on privacy and confidentiality by April 13, 2003.

They bring you up to date on all the newest laws and conditions that have been set and has a complete training series. It can also help you move all your paper files into electronic devices safely and privately.

Google is planning to present free Wi-Fi services in San Francisco which would send it’s users advertising that is targeted to their geography. However their are concerns that this plan would allow Google to track it’s users where ever they go through their login information.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) a Sanfrancisco privacy group recommends that the users on the network be allowed to use the program anonymously and does not want their information stored in any Google databases for long periods of time. They are afraid that law enforcement and lawyers can later subpoena these records later on for criminal or civil matters.

“We’re asking that the system allow people to surf and to post and read things anonymously,” Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney for EFF, said Monday. “Because the system requires people to sign on, it creates the opportunity for persistent tracking.”

Google would deliver advertising based on the location of the node, or Wi-Fi transmitter, people were using to access the system. The company, however, says it’s too early in the process to know how the final deal will address user privacy.

“The privacy of our users remains of utmost importance,” the Mountain View, Calif., company said in an emailed statement. “We are in the very early stages of the planning process and look forward to working with the City of San Francisco and EarthLink to provide free Wi-Fi access to the residents of San Francisco.”

Source: Linux Pipeline

Dawn Burriss of Optimize Magazine has written a wonderful article on the HIPAA regulations and whether it has really changed anything at all. She has first hand knowledge of how everything used to be before going electronic and helped mold what we now know as HIPAA.

“More than a decade ago, I had the opportunity to help shape the early health-care transaction standards that would one day become HIPAA. I worked on the American National Standards Institute’s X12 835 committee to define the first version of standard remittance advice, which is now a HIPAA standard. Back then, we could only imagine a time when the health-care industry would give up its paper processes and go electronic. Thanks to HIPAA and the hard work of several industry organizations, standardized formats finally arrived, and electronic-transaction usage increased as a direct result.”

“The Department of Justice now has the authority to pursue only violations of the most egregious nature—those that represent deliberate misuse of patient information. The penalties for lesser violations, such as inadvertent disclosures of health information, were set in the original HIPAA legislation and aren’t, at first glance, particularly onerous: a minimum of $100 per violation per year, and a maximum of $25,000 per year per violation. The real deterrent isn’t the fines themselves, but the bad publicity that befalls an organization when fines are imposed.”

Full Article

Right now HIPAA allows your private medical information to be shared many times by hundreds of thousands of people. The way the rules are now HIPAA for the purpose of your treatment, bill collecting, law enforcement and your employer.

Via Daily Breeze:

All that seems reasonable. HIPAA, for example, allows your doctor to discuss your case with, say, a radiologist if you require an X-ray for an ankle injury. But as things stand now, HIPAA regulations also allow your medical information to be shared by hundreds of thousands of people without your knowledge — health care-related companies such as drug makers, fund-raisers, law practices, marketers and transcription services. And those businesses can, in turn, share your data with their affiliates.

Your information also could be included in health-care research or public-health programs without your knowledge. Such is the case in New York City, where the Department of Health recently launched a program to monitor the blood-test results of more than 500,000 diabetic New Yorkers — a step to help reduce the some 1,900 diabetes-related deaths in the city each year.

I don’t think that most of us realizes what goes on without our knowledge whether it’s money related, or health related when it comes to our “private” information. We don’t know how many hands such info passes through, but we do know that we get lots of junk mail and letters from who knows where and we don’t always know how they got theirs hands on our information.

New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden has put out an AIDS proposal that is raising red flags and angering some. The proposal would allow health officials to look through private patient files. They would also no longer need written consent from a patient to test them for HIV or give counseling to someone who has tested negative. The proposal would also allow officials to keep track of AIDS and HIV patients.

“Given the availability of drugs that can effectively treat HIV infection and progress on anti-discrimination initiatives, perhaps society is ready to adopt traditional disease-control principles and proven interventions,” Frieden wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine. “We do need to make HIV testing more of a routine part of medical care. ”

Local health officials would be given the power to examine private patient files and see what they have been up to. For example if they saw that someone has stopped taking their medication they can call their doctor or even the patient directly.

Massachusetts like many other places are in bind when it comes to health care. This progress state has come up with a “solution” and it is a mind bender. How do they plan on making a fix? Simple, they are going to tell you that you MUST have health care or face fines. That’s about right. Because if you didn’t have the money yesterday for your health telling you to get it might make you richer tomorrow?

The plan goes into effect by July 2007.

Via Yahoo! News

* People who can afford private insurance and don’t buy it would ultimately face fines equal to half the cost of the cheapest policy the state thinks they should have bought. That might be as much as $1,200 a year.

* Companies with more than 10 employees would have to provide health insurance or pay the state $295 a year per employee.

* Individuals and businesses with 50 or fewer employees could buy insurance with pre-tax dollars, saving them as much as 25 percent.

* Insurance companies would be given “incentives” to offer stripped-down plans at lower cost.

* Low-cost basic plans would be available to people age 19 to 26.

* People who earn less than the federal poverty threshold would be able to “purchase subsidized policies that have no premiums,” as the Washington Post put it, but would face co-payments for some services, including emergency room visits.

* People who earn no more than three times the poverty threshold would buy “subsidized policies” with premiums based on ability to pay. Their children would be eligible for free coverage under Medicaid.

The idea for this plan is that people are required to have insurance for their cars, so they should be required to have health insurance. I do understand what they are saying. However if you choose not to own a car you don’t need car insurance. There is no way around this proposed plan and they overlook the fact that many just can’t afford it.

People are not deciding to pass up on health care because it’s a fun thing to do. The other parts of the plan that would give subsidized and lower cost plans to the lower income homes is a great idea though. Still depends on whether they can cover the cost.

Congress is trying to look toward the future and become more technology minded by building a national electronic health system. A group of 26 national groups however are asking that at the middle of any such system they add a patients privacy rights to protect patients.

“Patients own their health data and should control who has access to their personal health records. Privacy violations will exponentially increase if patients cannot limit which health care businesses and government agencies can access our personal health data over an electronic network,” said Deborah C. Peel, MD who is chairman for the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation (PPRF).

Tim Sparapani, Legislative Counsel of American Civil Liberties Union has also said, “The intentions of the proposed health information technology legislation are to improve healthcare, reduce medical errors, and save money, but we believe that those benefits will be realized only if there are ironclad privacy protections. Guaranteeing privacy will generate public acceptance, trust and participation in these networks.”

Critics fear that if people are forced to reveal their medical records over electronic networks that they will be less than honest about embarrassing symptoms,  avoid getting treated and even leave out important medical problems.

From PRweb

The 20 nationally recognized organizations are urging Congress to:

•    Restore the patient’s right of consent
•    Give patients the right to opt-out of having their records in any national or regional electronic health system
•    Give patients the right to segregate their most sensitive medical records
•    Require audit trails of all disclosures
•    Deny employers access to medical records
•    Require that patients be notified of all suspected or actual privacy breaches
•    Preserve stronger privacy protections in state laws
•    Enact meaningful enforcement and penalties for privacy violators

The organizations making up the coalition are the following:

American Civil Liberties Union
American Conservative Union
Asian American Justice Center
California Consumer Health Care Council
Christian Coalition of America
Common Cause
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Consumer Action
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Fairfax County Privacy Council
Family Research Council
Free Congress Foundation
National Asian Pacific American Families Against Substance Abuse
National Center for Transgender Equality
National Health Law Program
Patient Privacy Rights Foundation
Population Research Institute
Privacy Activism
Privacy Rights Now
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
Republican Liberty Caucus
Right March.com
Thoughtful House Center for Autism
U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation
U.S. Public Interest Research Group
U.S. Public Policy Committee for the Association for Computing Machinery

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