Healthcare IT Update

State prosecutors see HITECH as a big stick.

If you practice medicine or run a plan in Connecticut, make sure all your practice or organization’s security breach notification policies are in order: The Attorney General is not messing around when it comes to HIPAA enforcement.

Following its loss in May 2009 of a portable disk drive from a corporate office, Health Net of Connecticut, Inc. has become the first health plan to get popped by a state attorney general under the HITECH Act’s new enforcement provisions, which allow state AGs to enforce HIPAA’s penalty provisions for security violations.

On January 13, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal sued Health Net for failing to secure private patient medical records and financial information involving 446,000 Connecticut enrollees and promptly notify consumers endangered by the security breach. United Healthcare completed its acquisition of Health…