Healthcare IT Update

Health system puts over a million records at risk.

If you’ve been putting privacy compliance on the back burner, it’s time to bring it up front again. Investigators are paying attention, and you should, too.

Last year, for example, officials of a health system in Connecticut announced that an unencrypted hard drive with about 1.5 million patients’ information on it was stolen, potentially subjecting that protected health information (PHI) to abuse.

Stories like this are certainly eyecatching — and add to that the new focus in privacy with the introduction of the HITECH act — and you can be sure that patient privacy is gearing up to take center stage. And with employees taking work home and bringing laptops or cell phones with them to the office, you should be sure that your office’s security is tight.

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