HIPAA Security Rule was created to provide organizations with administrative, physical, and technical guidelines to safeguard their electronic PHI.   Healthcare IT industry veterans share top five most effective practices for HIPAA Security.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) act which is designed to protect patients privacy yet permit to disclose necessary personal health information for patient care and well being.

Recent survey by HCPro reveals the fact that most of the healthcare organizations charged with HIPAA compliance are not fully prepared for privacy & security audits by federal regulators.   Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to engage with KPMG LLP to audit 150 random covered entities and business associates by December 2012.    Its the best time for all health care organizations to prepare for the audit and follow two important HIPAA regulations.

The must consider regulation is CFR Part 164 HIPAA security and privacy requirements, which includes the following:

1. Risk Analysis
2. Risk Management
3. Sanction Policy
4. Information System Activity Review
5. Data Backup Plan
6. Disaster Recovery Plan
7. Emergency Mode Operation Plan
8. Workstation Use
9. Workstation Security
10. Contingency operations
       - Data Backup Plan
        - Disaster Recovery Plan
          - Emergency Mode Operation Plan

andysutorius:

“It’s reached a perfect storm stage and is one of the last industries to go through a total IT transformation,” Eric Marx, vice president of health care IT for Modis, told eWEEK

Physician Practices from 1 to 1000, HIT Recruiters, EHR and HIT Vendors…the perfect storm is here.

I am an EHR Implementation Specialist and I have the talent this article is referring to. My duties as your specialist is to 1) listen to your needs, 2) validate what I heard you say, 3) interview your staff and view the current workflow, 4) Submit RFI (requests for information) to EHR vendors that are ‘best fits’ based on the items above, 5) Interview vendors and refine your needs, 6) Select two EHR Vendors that have the best fit and submit to them a RFQ (request for quotation), 7) After receiving their quotations, I perform due diligence on the EHR vendors including but not limited to, investigating their management longevity, financial records, processes for help desk and software releases, Dun and Bradstreet and other research, 8) Choose a vendor, 9) Prepare a project management hub on-site for all meetings, communications and trainings to take place, 10) Assign champions for change, 11) Train and help keep morale and barriers to change at a minimum, 12) Kick off EHR implementation….and there is more….if you are interested in learning more about me and my skills, please contact me via my LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/asutorius

Microsoft introduces to  two education industry leaders, who unveild how micorsofts’s cloud computing platform, windows azure helped them that turned IT investment into an IT enabler for teaching and learning.  The education leader’s major challenge was to have an student lifecycle management  system that can make the information accessible to  employers or for an higher education institution with the  students permission.   The solution for the challenge here would be an automated software plus services that allows scheduled or real-time message or information exchangs between the education institutions or between education institution or employers.

The increased usage and need of mobile and other non corporate electronic devices have increased the risks in information security.  Healthcare industry is one the most important sector that demands high level of risk management and security for confidential data.

The engagements of healthcare industry with IT have been increased drastically in the recent times due to the advent of cloud computing technology.

The best five reasons to embrace cloud computing technology are:

1)Security

2)Flexibility

3)Cost effective

4)Scalability

5)Environmental friendly

Cloud computing satisfies the major expectation of health care industry by enabling easy, safe & secured transaction of  electronic health records.