Modern Healthcare covered a Congressional hearing this week to consider a federal data breach notification law. Congress has been kicking the idea around for years, but one of the big stumbling blocks has been whether any such law would pre-empt state laws. I have long been on record supporting a federal law that pre-empts state…
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HHS releases statement on Prime Healthcare/Shasta Regional settlement
In a press release issued yesterday and posted today, HHS writes: Shasta Regional Medical Center (SRMC) has agreed to a comprehensive corrective action plan to settle a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) investigation concerning potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule. The HHS Office for Civil…
Prime Healthcare and Shasta Regional Center settle HHS complaint, to pay $275,000
I don’t know if you can hear me, but I generally groan when I read a settlement that permits the party to make no admission of guilt. The FTC permits it, and HHS also permits it. I understand why they may choose to do that, but seriously, there are some breaches that are just so…
Lawsuits taking a different tack following healthcare data breaches
Jacob Hale Russell of Thomson Reuters reports that because data breach lawsuits generally get dismissed if plaintiffs cannot show financial harm, lawyers are shifting away from lawsuits based on privacy claims to lawsuits based on theories: But plaintiffs’ lawyers of late have been switching tack: Rather than framing lawsuits stemming from data breaches as privacy…
What healthcare CIOs need to know from Verizon data breach report
Don Fluckinger reports: The good news: While the annual Verizon-Secret Service 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report shows that hacktivist attacks and state-sponsored espionage are on the rise, overall, healthcare organizations aren’t really prime targets for those kinds of attacks. […] The bad news: The industry has a variety of data breach prevention worries. Healthcare providers have a lot of…
Identity theft charges prompts Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare to tighten policies
Jennifer Portman reports on yet another refund fraud ring involving a hospital employee as the source of personal information: Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare officials modified policies to help better protect the privacy of patients’ personal information and offered identity protection services to more than 100 patients after learning last year that a hospital employee was suspected…