FTC Workshop to Highlight Senior Identity Theft

Medical identity theft is the latest threat to affect patients—especially senior citizens. Although medical identity theft can make a victim of anyone who seeks healthcare, there are factors that can increase a person’s likelihood of becoming a victim of medical identity theft. One is age. Simply being a senior citizen can elevate a person’s chances of falling prey to this crime.

The Doctor Can See You Now - Mobile Threats and How Healthcare can Reduce Risks

One of the significant new trends in the use of technology in healthcare comes from doctors and patients using smartphones and other mobile devices like tablets .  The technology helps improve the quality and lower the cost of healthcare delivery.  The most recent third annual Ponemon study on patient privacy and data security found that 81% of the healthcare organizations surveyed permitted employees to use their own mobile devices at work.  There are many apparent benefits, some I can think of are:

Mobile Threats in the Healthcare Ecosystem

How many healthcare organizations allow their staff to use their smartphone at work to send/receive email, check calendars, access electronic patient records systems, etc.? 

81% of the organizations in a recent study by Ponemon Institute.

How Much is $234 Billion?

That’s like giving $793 to each of the 300 million people living in the U.S.  It also turns out to be the estimated amount of annual medical fraud.

PHI Security Experts Preaching Patient Advocacy - Boston PPN Forum A Success!

As Chair of the PHI Protection Network Forum, I am proud to say our first annual PPN Forum that was held in Boston on March 12 and 13, 2013 was a success!

Does Your Budget Cover HIPAA Privacy, Compliance, and Security?

You have an important budget approval meeting coming up with your executive management, to review the HIPAA privacy, compliance, and security initiatives in your budget this year. Are you ready?

Here are some of the questions you will need to be prepared for:

What’s The Worst That Can Happen?

I was talking to a news reporter a few days ago about the risks of a breach of patient medical records and she asked:

"What's the worst thing that can happen???"

2013: The Year of the Data Breach: 11 Data Security Tips to Immunize Your Organization

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2013 is the Year of the Snake. I predict that 2013 will be the Year of the Data Breach, at least in healthcare. According to the newly released Third Annual Benchmark Study on Patient Privacy & Data Security by Ponemon Institute, 94 percent of healthcare organizations surveyed suffered data breaches. The common-cold frequency of data breaches causes legal, financial and reputational headaches for everyone.

Are You Getting the Internal Support and Resources to Protect PHI?

Have you been working on creative and innovative ways to get your executive team to recognize the importance of investing additional resources in securing PHI?  If you need some ideas on how to approach this challenge, read on…

A Look Back at 2012: Healthcare Data Privacy and Security: A Year in Review

How would you characterize the changes that took place in data privacy and security in 2012?

From my perspective, there were three important things to note—and one ongoing problem that seems to plague many organizations’ ability to make significant progress.