Information Security in the Healthcare Industry

All Americans require assurance and protection measures to shield their daily lives and healthcare laws, government regulations, and approaches do only that. The United States government manages these requirements with the expectation of enhancing the strength of the general population while building up the tools, alongside resources and programs to associate in the conveyance of medical care services. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) alongside the security law have affected preventive care services and how it is conveyed. HIPAA was intended to guarantee that the suitable systems were actualized to protect patient's data while getting care.

Healthcare technology has grown and evolved over time. With the conversion to electronic medical records and the creation of social media just to name a few, ensuring patient privacy is of the utmost importance for healthcare facilities in this day and age. In order for an organization to avoid hefty fines, it is imperative that a healthcare administrator maintains compliance with the standards and regulations associated with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This paper will provide a summary

Regulation placed upon the healthcare system only seek to improve safety and security of the patients we care for. The enactment of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) and the enactment of Meaningful Use Act the United States government has set strict regulations on the security of health information and has allotted for stricter penalties for non-compliance. The advancement of electronic health record (EHR) systems has brought greater fluidity and compliance with healthcare but has also brought greater security risk of protected information. In order to ensure compliance with government standards organizations must adapt

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has set out the creation and maintenance of electronic health records (EHR) as the means by which patient care can be improved while the overall costs of healthcare to society can be driven down. However, the ability to consolidate patient records and increase their portability has increased their vulnerability to theft and exposure. Along with the requirement to create EHRs, HIPAA has mandated security requirements for a class of information identified as electronic protected health information (ePHI) in an effort to protect the confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from criminal misuse and general exposure. The iTrust Medical Care Requirements System (iTrust)

Privacy of health information has become an area of emphasis across the healthcare industry. It is important to understand what data is protected under federal regulations, how it can be shared, and how to prevent any accidental exposure of protected data. It is possible that data that should be protected can be exposed without anyone even realizing a violation has occurred. Exposure of protected healthcare data can result in medical identity theft and is therefore a very important and hot topic. The security and privacy of healthcare data is necessary to ensure consumer confidence in the healthcare industry and to prevent medical identity theft.

This case study will examine how Bon Secours Mary Immaculate Hospital identified a security breach in their facility and the course of action taken in an attempt to eradicate the problem. Security breaches are a major subject that must be addressed in the healthcare facility. With healthcare becoming more technology driven it is much easier to access data related to patients, specifically personal health information (PHI). Clearance is also a concern, not everyone in the healthcare facility should have access to a patient’s medical record. In order to protect PHIs, each facility must implement a policy and procedure related to internal, external, and third party security breaches. Security breaches can be detrimental to a healthcare facility and its patients, which is why breaches must be identified quickly for intervention and to minimize harmful outcomes to patients.

Event- 2. Though nothing is full proof in the current world of Internet and cyber attacks, proper planning and investment can prevent data theft to some extent. Health care organization can improve their heath data security status by investing in their incident response approaches, which will include documenting a formalized response process, and by building an incident response team to deal with it. Keeping relationship with outside experts to prevent hacking of data is helpful. Having all experts from all fields like IT personnel, security gurus, and operational people is not important, rather having a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary team who will understand the process is better to prevent security threats (Moore, 2014). Measures such as two-fold sign-in passwords/Captcha could have been implemented by Anthem. There should have been proper cyber security protocols instead of having a lax protocol, which made the hacker a way to invade into the

The United States has one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the world, with no visible promising future of change. According to Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), “The cost of healthcare breaches is usually higher than those in the financial and retail industries” (Horowitz, 3). With the implementation of technology in healthcare comes hefty fines if an organization does not correctly implement and utilize security policies and procedures. St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton, Massachusetts, is facing fines of up to $218,400 for putting an estimated 500 patients in danger by, “using a Web-based document-sharing application to store data containing protected health information” (McCann, 1). However,

minimizing human intervention. The regulatory focus at ABC Healthcare is on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). Both pieces of legislation highlight the need for good systems administration and controls, but focus on different aspects of the business. The main focus of HIPAA is to protect personally identifiable health information while SOX is concerned with data that impacts financial reporting. Violations may be met with both civil and criminal penalties. Therefore, the company must be ever watchful of new threats to their systems, data, and business operations.

As technology becomes increasingly infused with our daily lives, information security has become a universal concern. An examination of the healthcare system reveals that it is not exempt from the same information security challenges that other organizations face. The use of information technology in healthcare offers significant benefits, such as improved safety and healthcare quality, reduced cost of healthcare, greatly increased efficiency within healthcare operations, and better collaboration among healthcare professionals. However, as provider and patient data are converted into digital form, ensuring information security can become a daunting task. While there has been significant progress, healthcare IT is still in its infancy, and

Patient privacy is a serious concern for healthcare organizations. Protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of patient information is a major undertaking. Since the enactment of the ARRA-HITECH Act, the confidentiality of patients has been a leading concern for healthcare organizations. Healthcare providers are under pressure to secure access to clinical applications and protect the underlying information technology (IT) infrastructure from misuse by insiders, hackers, and identity thieves (McAfee, 2011). The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects the privacy of an individual’s health information and governs the way healthcare providers manage and disclose protected health information (PHI). To comply with the ARRA-HITECH, healthcare providers must introduce appropriate systems and practices to comply with HIPAA. In particular, the act introduces new regulations governing the confidentiality of EHRs.

Abstract With the continued growth of healthcare information systems in the last several years, comes the priority to protect and secure the privacy of the patient information. Healthcare information systems such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are becoming increasingly more important in the healthcare industry because of the attempts to improve quality care and to make accessibility to healthcare information more simplified for all involved. Physicians and hospitals are implementing these EHRs because they offer several advantages over paper records. They increase access to health care, improve the quality of care and decrease costs. Unfortunately, healthcare providers have to face the fact that violations of protected healthcare information will increase just as rapidly as the healthcare information systems grows.

Privacy concerns in healthcare apply to both paper and electronic records. Today records can be exchanged over the Internet and they are subject to the same security concerns as any other type of data transaction over the Internet. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) were passed in the US in 1996 to establish rules for access, authentications, storage and auditing, and transmittal of electronic medical records. This standard made restrictions for electronic records more stringent than those for paper records. However, there are concerns as to the adequacy of implementation of this standard. As the ever-changing healthcare industry evolves, one key topic within the electronic health record (EHR) is privacy. The Federal government has set guidelines that all healthcare organizations will have to comply with in regards to electronic health transactions. Most supporters believe that the EHR will improve care and reduced costs, while transforming the health care system, but whether the privacy of the

The rules in "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996" require that organizations will create policies and procedures to prevent unauthorized access to health care information. All persons who maintain and transmit health information apply reasonable technical and physical safeguards to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of such information and unauthorized uses or disclosures. However the existing problems of security of data are not yet fully overcome and the existing problems relating to patient record confidentiality and the impact

Information security and privacy is occupying a most important role in the healthcare territory in order to deliver protected information process to their patients (Appari, & Johnson, 2010). As healthcare department is the organization with vast data and essential information the hospitals has to keep a useful information security technique in their enterprise process (Mishra et al., 2011). Information security is one such phase in the healthcare sphere which is extremely problematic to describe and evaluate even to the individuals who are working on the process. In the healthcare organization, information is of many types which required for the work and even the security is a main control for almost all the practices which are transmitted out in the healthcare field (Appari, & Johnson, 2010). Hospitals, in specific, have been instructed to create a new set of security specialists to protect healthcare data tools techniques upon which exists may rely. Healthcare data is very critical for patients because it is very confidential records. If a medical apparatus is filled with a computer virus it can even exemplify a possibility to patients ' lives. Hence, hospitals should design alertness of the risk, to defend against concerns to healthcare databanks and be concerned about the high risk of infected computers or medical tools being connected to their networks (Mishra et al., 2011).