Mike Ellis reports: Bertha Hunter has not had a flu shot in her life and she doesn’t intend to get one just because AnMed Health is requiring all its employees to get one. Hunter, an AnMed Health employee, is suing the Anderson healthcare company on grounds that the hospital’s mandatory shots are a violation of…
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Patient Consent: Much To Be Done
Howard Anderson writes: Detailed patient consent recommendations that a privacy and security “tiger team” recently completed are just a starting point toward giving patients far more control over their healthcare information, the co-chair of the team acknowledges. In an interview (complete transcript below), attorney Deven McGraw says the recommendations, which federal regulators are now considering for…
No one's blaming the software: a response to EMR and HIPAA
Over on EMR and HIPAA John writes: I was recently sent an Information Week article on “Steady Bleed: State of HealthCare Data Breaches.” The article basically tries to list out all of the data breaches that are happening in healthcare and how healthcare companies aren’t doing what they need to do to protect patient data….
Groups urge Congress to exempt them from data breach bill
Eric Chabrow reports: Witnesses testifying Wednesday on a data breach bill called on senators to exempt industries from notifying individuals whose personal information is exposed if other laws require such alerts. Melissa Bianchi, a lawyer representing the American Hospital Association, told the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance Subcommittee, that…
VA employee hoarded stacks of patient-related info at home
Sandra Yin reports on recent VA disclosures of breaches. I had covered the August report here, but her coverage makes some interesting points; Paper is much more problematic than electronic data, according to Veterans Affairs CIO Roger Baker. [which is why all state and federal mandatory disclosure laws should include paper records — Dissent!] Here’s…
Another "balancing" argument about privacy and EHRs
Some days I feel like a health care sector Paula Revere spreading the warning, “the breaches are coming, the breaches are coming!” I just saw this commentary on HealthNewsDigest.com by Eric Demers, the senior vice president of health and life science at MEDecision: …. We shouldn’t allow overreactions to misperceived weaknesses in EHR security to…