Category: Uncategorized

Jeff Drummond blogs: OCR to Focus Audits on Entities with Long-Standing Patterns of Non-Compliance.  According to BNA (subscription required), OCR will look for organizations with long histories of noncompliance, across all areas of the healthcare industry.  Entities that can demonstrate efforts to create and nurture a “culture of compliance” will come out of audits looking good.  Entities…

DutchNews.nl reports: The family doctors’ association Vereniging van Praktijkhoudende Huisartsen is pressing ahead with legal action against the introduction of a new electronic patient records system because its backers have failed to meet agreements on internet security and privacy. The VPH said in December it would delay a planned court case because the organisers pledged…

Gonzalo Vina reports: Prime Minister David Cameron will today agree on a plan with his Indian counterpart,Manmohan Singh, to step up the fight against cyber-crime as he seeks better protection for U.K. data held on Indian computer servers. Cameron will discuss practical steps with Singh on the second day of a three-day visit to the South Asian…

Is a two-page notification letter too long and possibly overwhelming to patients? Maybe.

Jamie Doward reports: Private firms will soon be able to buy people’s medical and genetic data without their consent and, in certain cases, acquire personal information that might enable them to identify individuals. The revelation, which contradicts government claims that such material would be completely anonymous, has raised fears that pharmaceutical firms and insurance companies…

Last week I noted an abortion case in New Mexico where the woman’s records became public fodder in the highly politicized abortion debate. Petual Dvorak describes another abortion case where a woman’s medical and personal details were made public after she died within a day of a late-term abortion: Her name and photo have appeared…