hipaa

Doctors' offices, clinics and hospitals are a fruitful hunting ground for identity thieves, who are using increasingly sophisticated methods to steal patient information, lawyers and privacy experts say.

Quoted: Identity thieves use medical data to get credit card numbers, access bank accounts or falsely bill Medicare and other health insurers. Consumers typically are unaware of medical identity theft until creditors contact them for payment.

Quoted: Privacy concerns could present a significant psychological barrier to individuals signing up for personal health records...According to Markle, the national survey of a representative sample of adults 19 years of age and older was conducted online, and included both those who use the Internet and those who do not.

Quoted: The HIPAA database is the first of several regulatory timelines planned by two advocacy groups to help stakeholders track IT initiatives. The timeline predicts that adoption of the 5010 version of HIPAA transactions will be complete by 2014.

Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) and the North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance, Inc. (NCHICA).

Quoted: The policy announcement by the American Health Information Management Association and the American Medical Informatics Association was made Thursday as part of a joint position statement on privacy and the development of a national health information network, or NHIN.

The current, key federal healthcare privacy rule was originally drafted by HHS staffers in 2000 and amended by HHS in 2002 to implement the privacy provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

HIPAA allows the states to maintain their own healthcare privacy laws as long as they are more stringent than those in the federal rule.

Quoted: The World Privacy Forum warned that federal medical privacy rules do not apply to some companies that store personal health records online. Some states have their own health privacy laws, but an advocate says many have not been tested in court.

Quoted: The data loss includes HIV and hepatitis patient histories for an undetermined number of people.

Quoted: State health inspectors have cited Swedish Medical Center for numerous deficiencies, including operating room contamination, violation of patient confidentiality and patient neglect.

Quoted: Survey shows that consumer acceptance of electronic health records exchange jumps when benefits and protections are explained to them...consumers respond most strongly to the need for electronic information exchange when they are given examples of difficulty accessing medical records in emergencies, out-of-state situations and natural disasters.