You can think that you and your medical files are safe and that doctors, nurses and hospitals on a whole cannot discuss your medical files with anyone but it actually depends on the state that you live in and how tough their medical privacy laws are.

For instance if you have a child that you no longer speak to and you would not trust with your medical information, you might want to inform your doctor that under no circumstances do they give this child any information about you. Give the names of people who should anything happens to you, you would trust.

You can visit the doctor and then that child can call and say they are finding out info for you and some will give them what they need to know. It’s as easy as that.

I just finished reading another great article and this one is for the people who don’t fully understand their medical privacy and especially for those who have no idea what HIPAA is.

Read this article which is three pages long and learn what you need to know when it comes to protecting yourself from people who would take your private information and use it as they see fit.

We sign many papers when we go to the doctor, find out what you should know about them.

Source

Well I doubt it should be surprising us that anything that can benefit us, can also be used in a different way to benefit criminals. If they look hard enough there is always a crack that they can criminally slip through.

Police say it’s frustrating that some criminals are being allowed to use HIPAA laws to hide from authorities.

A recent case involves a man suspected of throwing a rock at his wife, then lighting her house on fire. He was injured and taken to the hospital, but the hospital wouldn’t tell police when he was to be released. So the suspect checked out and went to another hospital.

Sergeant Paul Juroscak: “We hadn’t known from this informant that he had gone to another hospital. We never would have found out where he was at. This could allow dangerous criminals to escape.”

Source

It is sad that only in the aftermath of something bad happening is when changes are made. Apparently an analyst took home all this info to do some work and the information was stolen.

I think that is crazy because in a single moment tens of millions of American’s might be affected. Even worse is that this is not the first theft of an analysts taken home work. This is just the biggest in the amount of data stolen.

The VA has said to just watch your credit card balance, checking account and credit history carefully because these people have everything from your home information, birthday, name to even your social security number.

This theft was an identity stealers biggest dream come true. They have everything to assume the identity of millions of people for years to come.

HIPAA Academy is a great place to start if you are thinking about employment in that field. This website does not only have job listings they also have a learning center as well as online courses that you can take.

What I like about this site is that it has so much help in one place. You can not only get help and find lots of information but from right there you can also get training and recieve certification.

I wrote a post in Medcare forum covering a piece of this, but it came as a shock to me. Did you know that if you go and get STD testing (even simply for standard checkup) at your physician using medical insurance, that the results whether positive or negative will be sent to your medical insurance company and often passed on to your employer? Even if you are negative, it might reflect poorly on you in your employer’s eyes as ‘risky sexual lifestyle’ individual. My doctor warned about this before testing and recommended going to the health clinic where its free or low cost and they don’t pass that information on. Granted, state by state, different laws for different folks, but its something to look into. Medical privacy isn’t as secure as it used to be, and be wise before you test.

I just finished reading another great article and this one is for the people who don’t fully understand their medical privacy and especially for those who have no idea what HIPAA is.

Read this article which is three pages long and learn what you need to know when it comes to protecting yourself from people who would take your private information and use it as they see fit.

We sign many papers when we go to the doctor, find out what you should know about them.

Source

Once your getting started or have already made your business HIPAA compliant, try not to overlook email. There are a few places online that will help you secure your emails including ones with attachments.

Email is a dangerous thing for employers because it’s so easy for all sorts of bugs, viruses and worms to make their way out of email and into your computer systems. Those very bugs is what hackers use to get into computers and steal information.

For an individual household it can be bad, but for businesses it’s damaging. Considering that there can be hundreds of thousands of private customer information.

Two such places that promise to protect your emails are:

• Advisor Mail
• Send Mail

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) is a hard thing to learn and unfortunately it seems that many employees are completely unaware of what it is exactly. Some people have even given me a blank stare when I mention the word HIPAA.

This brings me to Train4HIPAA. They are simply one of the many places you can go to set up classes for youself or employees to teach or learn about HIPAA. They can also help you prepare for certification.

With medical and business privacy it can be hard to do everyday things and try your best to keep those private documents and hard drives safe from prying eyes and/or hackers. Something as simple as faxing can have harsh consequences if not done securely.

eFax is one such company that promises you a secure way to get your information faxed while protecting the privacy of the documents and keeping them safe.

eFax Corporate business fax numbers utilize your existing email accounts and enable your business to transmit patient and health insurance information securely and privately. Enjoy how easy compliance can be when you send, receive, track and archive sensitive faxed documents digitally.

A new rule is being pass mostly for small businesses to help protect private customer information. It is not about someone hacking into the computers and getting the info but for other people in the offices.

Before the rule the individual businesses were responsible to make sure that employees who had no business seeing certain info were blocked by turning the monitor or putting on a glare filter.

This ruling was pass in 2003 but like most of the rulings in HIPAA no one seems to pay attention to them. I doubt they break out in a sweat as deadlines pass them by. The last deadline was April 21. I wonder if they set another date.