Who must comply with these new HIPAA privacy standards?As required by Congress in HIPAA, the Privacy Rule covers:
- Health plans
- Health care clearinghouses
- Health care providers who conduct certain financial and administrative transactions electronically. These electronic transactions are those for which standards have been adopted by the Secretary under HIPAA, such as electronic billing and fund transfers.

These entities (collectively called “covered entities”) are bound by the new privacy standards even if they contract with others (called “business associates”) to perform some of their essential functions. The law does not give the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) the authority to regulate other types of private businesses or public agencies through this regulation. For example, HHS does not have the authority to regulate employers, life insurance companies, or public agencies that deliver social security or welfare benefits.

From HIPAABook.com:

These are the top 10 essential HIPAA books for IT managers to read. Each of these popular titles was rated most highly useful by the cutomers at Amazon.

Read article: Top 10 highest-rated HIPAA books for IT Managers

Hipaa was supposed to be a good thing when it was first created but since then it seems to be more of a nightmare. I think the reason for that is businesses and medical industries are not following it in many cases. It’s there for our privacy but as we know only to well, there is no such thing as privacy. Read More

A paramedic in Kansas posted pictures on the internet of a deadly crash involving an ATV and school bus. He said he had the parents permission but he’s in hot water because of it. His posting to the internet is against HIPAA rules.

Paramedic suspended after posting photos of ATV crash on Internet

In many offices, information is often not as private as it should be. That should make you a little concerned when it comes to your supposedly private medical records. Read here to find out more about Workstation protection.

Protecting Your Workstation

Niner Niner, a collaborative weblog network, has over 25 great blogs and this “Best Of” highlights just a few of the posts that were written by some of the Niner authors, in topics that range from High Heels, Ajax, HIPAA Privacy Regulation to gadgets, books and health. 

In Ajax Blog, Sreejith introduces us to a few new things. First is Vox a new blogging service from Six Apart that uses WYSIWYG with a taste of web 2.0. After that we learn about Krun.ch and Wishlistr.

Blogging Naked: Scarification and lip plates are shown to be some of the newest and more popular form of “self-expression” in recent years.

Bookadoodle: Nancy Callahan posted more in her series “Getting Published” and this latest edition was part 5.

Boomer 2.0 had posts that pointed out that boomers can still have that second career and another that shows many are not even planning retirement anytime soon.

In Class Action Questions find out about lawsuits involving pyramid scams, hair raising beauty product claims and why State Farm was penalized.

Credit Cardenza: Unfortunately, millions of people are drowning in  credit card debt, have to worry about credit scams and fraud, and let’s not even talk about the international fees.

Dealsneak managed to sneak more than a few deals pass us this summer including, the Samsonite laptop case, a gorgeous leather bench, and a sweet looking Thermaltake Tsunami computer case.

Feed Money discusses the fact the Ebay has jumped on the contextual ad bandwagon as well as blog feeds and a program called RSS To Blog.

If you need to Fix Your Finances one of the first steps is learning how to save your money. After that you can check out Mvelopes to learn all about budgets.

At Games For Money you can find places to play free online gambling games and also learn some card counting tricks and tips.

The High Heels Blogs show us which killer heels are on sale including boots, sandals, slides and mules. Also take a look at some killer wedding heels for this summers nuptials.

A few notable gadgets that were blogged in the HyperGadget blog were the Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader, and the jumbled and messy looking organizer.

Over at the Medcare Forum, Kathleen Milazzo tells us more about that scary mad cow disease and our medical privacy laws.

Find out just how much house you can afford before you go running off to get that mortgage. And is the housing bubble really ready to blow? All this and more in Mortgage Updates.

At My Secret Side Biz learn how to make a profit, how to get your own powerwash, and simple business and Ebay tips.

On Healthy Living: Sarah White tells us all about a new study that could help with asthma reduction when it comes to do light exercise that involves stead breathing like yoga.

On Movies has a decade of super heroes list that includes recent and unreleased movies. Leafworks reviewed The Omen and we got to see the trailer for the new Ghost Rider movie.

Powersellers Blog: Ebay has done it. They finally reached 200 million members and they are also expanding into new ideas. Also people are fed up with Paypal while crooks are finding more ways to defraud your account.

Seo Updates: Yahoo one of the biggest email services was hit with a worm and Google expanded into real estate but won’t be making a browser, at least not anytime soon.

Get some free exercise tips from The Diet Logs. You will certainly need them if you plan to take a bite of this $100 burger.

Living the Single life? Well take a look at some great break up lines and if your looking to meet people Leafworks posted a great review of club La Rumba.

Thumb Gods: Nintendo is no, no to the name Wii for their new console a game system that is at the end of this long list containing The Evolution of Video Game Consoles.

Las Vegas Revealed that it was ill prepared for a massive disaster, but til then you can still get married and get comp’d in Vegas.

Wander the World, well the State of Colorado with Leafworks. He takes us to the Cherry Blossom Festival, Gothnic in Denver, Old Colorado City, Plaza del Arte Festival in Downtown Denver and Garden of the Gods.

While some are up in arms about the whole Rush Limbaugh Viagra privacy debacle, I am more interested in all the thefts that been going on. It seems to be a recurring story week after week.

Only recently the Federal Trade Commission had their own breach, which was due to someone stealing a laptop from an employees vehicle. A lot of these problems seem to be happening because employees have laptops and private files with millions of data on hundreds of thousands of people and no one is doing a thing about it.

I really would have thought that companies would take a look at what’s happening and start changing the way information is handled when it comes to employees taking it with them.

I would take a large guess that until some of the information stolen belongs to a celebrity or someone in Congress, not a damn thing is going to be done. If you are one of the people affected I guess they will sing you the tune of too bad, so sad.

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.

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

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.