Mary Mosquera reports: The Privacy and Security Tiger Team yesterday began exploring how current technologies can help patients make decisions on consent and access to their electronic health records when more sensitive patient data is involved. The team, composed of government and private sector healthcare privacy experts, teed up questions related to how to accommodate…
Category: Uncategorized
HHS Dismisses AHF Complaint, Closes AIM Investigation
Oleh writes: The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the main group attempting to force adult performers to use condoms and dental dams (and possibly goggles) in every sex scene, has just been handed a setback by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has ruled that its Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has…
Dare we hope?
From HHS’s web site: The Interim Final Rule for Breach Notification for Unsecured Protected Health Information, issued pursuant to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, was published in the Federal Register on August 24, 2009, and became effective on September 23, 2009. During the 60-day public comment period on the…
North Carolina To Privatize IT Operations, Jobs
Paul McDougall reports: Faced with a looming, $3 billion budget deficit, North Carolina is eyeing a major shakeup of its tech operations that could see the state outsource the bulk of its IT work to the private sector while consolidating other operations internally. The state has launched a search for an outside consulting firm to…
Patient treatment stopped due to faulty IT
A somewhat scary story out of Sweden. We want a facility’s IT department to routinely scan for viruses and security issues, but not in the middle of a procedure: Doctors were forced to suspend treatment of a patient with a heart condition when the hospital’s IT department suddenly took control of a medical computer, the…
HHS reveals three more breaches
HHS/OCR’s web site reveals three more breaches that were never reported in mainstream media: The Long Island Consultation Center in New York is a private mental health clinic providing outpatient psychiatric services. According to an alert on their web site: On May 24, a computer device was reported missing from a secured area at LICC….