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There are so many rules that involve HIPPA. Whether you go to a doctor’s office, a hospital or in the medical facility you are given a HIPPA form that states how your medical records are confidential. Ever sense HIPPA was established. I have always wondered how safe my medical records are. Recently, I watched Michael Jackson’s doctor state the disease that he was diagnosed with on national television.

I have read up on HIPPA and from the information that I have received HIPPA is supposed to be enforced whether you are alive or deceased. If this is a fact how can doctors or any medical staff speak about your medical condition without your consent? Obviously, he could not have given his consent knowing that he is no longer with us. This brings up huge red flags for me.

For someone who has severe medical conditions. I have always wondered what if I went into a doctors office and knew the person behind the front desk or the nurse. And one night, that person is speaking to someone else in a related medical issue comes up with someone they know. Will that person forget for a second that my medical is confidential?

For the most part, I believe HIPPA is a good program that does try to keep your records confidential. Still, as we have seen with the Michael Jackson situation there a kinks that need to be sorted out.

Going to the doctor or the hospital we are entitled to our privacy. Sometimes we have to protect our rights to our privacy. That’s why when you fill those forms out of who they can release your information too. You need to make sure of who if anyone you put down and to keep it limited. This one way of many that you can protect your privacy.

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

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.

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

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.

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

We know that the only survivor in the West Virginia mine explosion is still in critical condition, he hasn’t awoken and he’s not breathing on his own. Daniel Engber of Slate asks an interesting question. Exactly how much information are the doctors allowed to give the press?

How much detail

InformationWeek is reporting:

A federal advisory panel on Tuesday issued a 14-point report of recommendations for what’s needed to develop, implement, and foster the secure nationwide exchange of electronic medical information.

The report was issued by the Commission on System Interoperability, which was created by Congress as part of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. The commission was charged with developing recommendations, priorities, and a timeline for implementing an electronic health information exchange network.

A nationwide healthcare system would be a ripe target for hackers. Let’s hope these recommendations are heeded by the Federal gov.

Not only could the suggestions reduce security threats, but also help save lives.

As you know, medical mistakes such as prescriptions being filled incorrectly, cost thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of lives yearly.

The article continues:

Government researchers estimate that health IT, like physician order-entry and standards-based electronic medical record systems, can help reduce tens of thousands of medical mistakes and billions of dollars in health-care costs annually in the U.S. There are already a handful of incentive programs underway by some private insurers, as well as a Medicare pilot program, that reward health-care providers who improve their quality-of-patient care using health IT.

Read more here

Here’s an interesting twist on the old federal vs. state jurisdictional dispute.

First Amendment Center is reporting:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A newspaper wants to report on homes, many of them rented, where lead paint has harmed children. The city health department fears federal fines and penalties if it complies with the state’s open-records law.

In what attorneys say is one of the first such tests nationwide, the Ohio Supreme Court must decide if state law trumps the federal rule.

The 2-year-old federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act prohibits health insurers, medical care providers and entities that process medical information from releasing any information that identifies the patient. However, the information can be released by a public agency if a state records law mandates it.

This seems like one of those grey areas of the law where the legislature did not fully understand some of the ramifications of HIPAA legislation.

Read more here

The privacy spot reports:

According to the Houston Chronicle, Christus St. Joseph Hospital sent approximately 16,000 letters to patients informing them that a computer stolen in a burglary earlier this year may have contained some of their medical records and Social Security numbers. According to the hospital letters, the only patient files affected, to their knowledge, are files for patients treated in the “emergency department in 2004, patients who sought outpatient services in radiology, sports medicine and rehabilitation from August through September 2003 and April through June 2004, and patient charts from 2001.”

Read more here

Just catching up on a bit of HIPAA / Healthcare / Privacy news of late.

Seems IBM announced that it was acquiring Healthlink, the largest U.S. consulting firm dedicated to the health-care industry.

Rochelle Garner of CRN reports:

IBM announced Tuesday that it will buy Healthlink, the largest U.S. consulting firm dedicated to the health-care industry. The acquisition gives IBM Global Services the domain expertise of Healthlink’s 550-person professional organization, including 300 physicians, nurses and pharmacists. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition is the second in one week in which a large IT consulting company acquired the health-care expertise of another. Last week, Accenture paid $175 million to buy the U.S. health-care practice of Capgemini. The 600 North American employees of Europe’s largest consulting company will join Accenture’s Health and Life Sciences practice in North America, the companies said. Paris-based Capgemini will retain its outsourcing contracts with U.S. health-care clients as well as continue health-care consulting in the federal public sector.

A Linux news site is reporting:

Ecora has released Enterprise Auditor version 3.6 that includes its new HIPAA Report Pack, a collection of more than 150 pre-built report definitions that address the technical and administrative safeguards of the HIPAA security standard.

“The manual process of preparing for a HIPAA security audit is time consuming, resource intensive, and prohibits sustainability, said Alex Bakman, founder and CEO of Ecora. “When organizations look at technology for compliance, they need to consider automated solutions such as our Enterprise Auditor that can cost-effectively help them maintain compliance in a repeatable and sustainable manner.”

Read more here

Looks like Senator Clinton and Congressman Markey have introduced federal legislation to prevent offshore outsourcing of personal data:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Representative Edward J. Markey announced that they would introduce the Safeguarding Americans from Exporting Identification Data (SAFE ID) Act in the United States Senate and House today, legislation that would protect the privacy of consumers’ most sensitive personal information. This legislation would close gaps in U.S. privacy laws that leave consumers vulnerable when American businesses and healthcare organizations send accounting and medical information overseas for processing, often without consumers’ knowledge. As Americans prepare to file their taxes, Senator Clinton and Representative Markey underscored the urgent need to make sure that personal information is safeguarded.

Link: Legislation PDF

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