Regulators are continuing their campaign to enforce compliance with the HIPAA "right of access" provision. HHS on Monday said it had slapped a solo-practitioner psychotherapy counselor with a $15,000 settlement in a dispute involving a father who sought medical records of his three minor children.
The tally of individuals whose sensitive information was compromised by the exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability in Fortra's GoAnyWhere secure file transfer software is growing by millions as more entities report heath data breaches to regulators.
The University of Iowa Health Care is facing a proposed class action lawsuit from a patient who alleges that online tracking tools embedded into the medical center's websites secretly transmitted sensitive personal and health information to Facebook.
Healthcare sector entities' reliance on specialty and legacy equipment, including imaging systems and other gear, continues to present attractive targets for threat actors and a growing risk for medical providers, said Frank Catucci, CTO and head of research at security firm Invicti Security.
Six individuals - including five former employees of a Tennessee healthcare organization - have pleaded guilty to criminal HIPAA violations in an alleged scheme involving the sale of motor vehicle accident patient information to third parties. One of the defendants has been sentenced so far.
Diabetic patients who used a Medtronic smartphone app for managing insulin levels are being told that Google may have collected certain personal information through the sign-in infrastructure. The disclosure comes amid a wave of healthcare providers reassessing their use of third-party tools.
Healthcare entities need to think more strategically about managing risk by implementing a robust cybersecurity framework such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology's CSF, said Bob Bastani, cybersecurity adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services.
A top HIPAA-enforcement priority for regulators is cracking down on entities that disclose patient information to third parties without permission through the use of website tracking codes, says Melanie Fontes Rainer, director of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights.
The potential use cases for generative AI technology in healthcare appear limitless, but they're weighted with an array of potential privacy, security and HIPAA regulatory issues, says privacy attorney Adam Greene of the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine.
Vendors should be more transparent and faster in communicating when they experience a breach or other security incident that affect clients' data, says Anahi Santiago, CISO at ChristianaCare. "Sometimes we find out about these incidents through our third-party monitoring systems," she said.
Effective security governance in a healthcare entity is a balancing act that requires sponsorship by top leadership and careful consideration of the concerns of clinicians and others in the organization, according to Eric Liederman and deputy CISO Steven Frank of Kaiser Permanente.
An online alcohol abuse counseling service is notifying about 109,000 clients of a data breach involving the company's prior use of tracking tools on its websites dating back to 2017. The breach affects members of Monument Inc. and Tempest, a counseling service acquired in May 2022.
Federal regulators have issued proposed changes to the HIPAA privacy rule aimed at protecting reproductive healthcare information from disclosures or uses involving law enforcement and related purposes in the wake of the Supreme Court last year overturning Roe v. Wade.
Federal regulators have issued new rules aimed at securing certified healthcare software, helping patients decide which records to keep private, and protecting data used by AI and predictive tools. The 556-page proposed rule seeks to promote innovation and data sharing while tightening security.
Regulators are scrutinizing the use of website tracking codes and analytics such as Meta Pixel and Google Analytics. Health entities must carefully assess how those tools are being used on their health-related websites, say privacy attorneys Cory Brennan of Taft and Mark Swearingen of Hall Render.
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