The Epidemic Growth Of Information Technology

by other specialty clinic or physician, in a mouse click. Moreover, many big health care organizations incorporated a secure online portal for the patients to access their test results, and it eliminated the hassle of a revisit to the hospital and proved to be cost effective for the patient. So the problem lies with how efficiently people manage the data. And many in health industry instead of seeing the big opportunity, they point fingers at the extra burden and challenge of Implementing cyber security. Hansen said. “It can’t be seen just as, ‘Oh this is such a burden”. Hence the need of the hour is adequate and sufficient training to the staff who deal with this sensitive patient data and make them aware of how important to protect the data and consequences of data breaches. Because the healthcare consumers, in the event of data breach and identity theft, they often end up suing the

Identify theft, in general, can affect a person for a lifetime. Federal law defines medical identity theft as “A fraud committed or attempted using the identifying information of another person without authority to obtain medical services or goods, or when someone uses the person’s identity to obtain money by falsifying claims for medical services and falsifying medical records to support those claims.” (“Red Flag Rule - Identity Theft Prevention Policy”, 2009). However, medical identity theft is not as easily traced compared to something such as, credit card theft. With the crime being less traceable and the ever-expanding health care system, it is not surprising that medical identity theft is continually rising. Medical identity theft accounts

Attempts to stop fraud were enhanced under Public Law 104-191, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The purpose was to improve the Medicare program under title XVIII of the Social Security Act, the Medicaid program under title XIX of such Act, and the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system. This public law encouraged the development of a health information system through standards and requirements for the electronic transmission of certain health information (aspe.hhs.go). The Act established a program to take action against fraud committed against public and private health plans. The legislation required the establishment of a national Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (HCFAC), under the joint direction of the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) acting through the Department 's Inspector General (HHS.gov). The HCFAC program is designed to coordinate Federal, State and local law enforcement activities with respect to health care fraud and abuse. The Act requires HHS and Department of Justice (DOJ) detail in an Annual Report the amounts deposited and appropriated to the Medicare Trust Fund, and the source of such deposits. (HHS.gov) I will summarize the impact of these laws as it pertains to how they are impacting the healthcare delivery system. (HHS.gov)

On February, 8, 2011, Ortho Montana, PSC, a healthcare provider submitted a data breach which affected thirty seven thousand people. The type of breach described was ‘Theft’ and information was breached from Laptop. The exact description included in the web description states a laptop which had electronic unsecured protected health information was either lost or stolen. This took place when the laptop was taken to an event by a workforce member.

Cybercrime is a quickly developing range of crime. More criminals are abusing the rate, accommodation and obscurity of the Internet to perpetrate a different scope of criminal exercises that know no borders, either physical or virtual, cause genuine damage and posture real dangers to victims around the world.

In today’s health care industry providing quality patient care and avoiding harm are the foundations of ethical practices. However, many health care professionals are not meeting the guidelines or expectations of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) or obeying the organizations code of ethics policies, especially with the use of electronic medical records (EMR). Many patients fear that their personal health information (PHI) will be disclosed by hackers or unauthorized users. According to Carel (2010) “ethical concerns shroud the

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.

Security breaches of EMRs vary from someone without consent viewing the patient’s information, to a hacker using the information to steal one’s identity. According to Privacy Rights Clearing House, more than 260 million data breaches have occurred in the United States, including those of health related records. Approximately 12 percent of data breaches involve medical organizations (Gellman, 2012). According to Redspin, a provider of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act risk analysis and IT security assessment services, more than 6 million individual’s health records were compromised during a period from August 2009 and December 2010 (Author Unknown, 2010). A provision of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act requires all breaches affecting 500 or more people to be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services. This reporting is to be accomplished within 60 days of discovery. The Redspin report covering the period above involved 225 breaches of protected health information. The amount of people with access to an individual’s health record creates concern with confidentiality. According to the Los Angeles

Imagine the feeling of your life being turned upside down in the event of an unauthorized individual utilizes your personal information to seek healthcare benefits. This harmful event can cause a variety of different risks for the individual, healthcare organization, and third party payer. Therefore, I personally feel that medical identity theft is an act of robbing personal information that causes greater consequences mainly to the well-being of an individual. With this in mind, it is described as a criminal behavior that needs to be taken seriously because it can jeopardize the overall safety of patient care and negatively impact the individual’s personal life. Unfortunately, these harmful acts are happening every single day and most people don’t even realize it. With that being said, I am going to discuss an individual’s personal experience of medical identity

Throughout the year 2014 through 2015 many technology changes occurred to reduce the threat of healthcare fraud. Statistics show that healthcare fraud abuse laws help control cheating the system in the healthcare field. In 2014 68 billion dollars were spent on healthcare fraud, estimated by the national healthcare anti-fraud association. Others estimated that the cost could reach as much as 10 percent or 230 billion of the 2.27 trillion spent on healthcare fraud in 2015. With this coming to light to the health care administration and the U.S government. Healthcare fraud and abuse programs have been put in place to cut down this costly threat.

Medical identify theft is the biggest challenges face by both health care organization and patient. It is the practice in which someone uses another individual’s identifying information such as health insurance information, SSN, address, phone number and other personal information without individual knowledge or permission to obtain medial services, goods or to obtain money by falsifying claims for medical service and falsifying medical records to support those claims ( Mancini, 2014). Healthcare organization, Providers, insurance payers and patient are negatively affect by the medical identity theft. Among them, Patient are the biggest victims because they are the one who will receive unwanted treatment and medication which may be life threatening,

The department of Health and Human Services protects and guides the health and well being of individuals here in America (Thacker, 2014). They fulfill these duties providing Americans with adequate and efficient health and human services and monitoring services designed to increase the efficiency of care in the health system (Thacker, 2014). One of the services being monitored by the department of Health and Human Services is the electronic health record system, which carries private and vital information of patient’s health record enabling all eligible participating health workers access to these records (Thacker, 2014). A breach of the protective health information of patients in a health organization creates chaos as these are against the health insurance portability and accountability (HIPAA) law (Thacker, 2014). Hence, measure will have to be put in place to determine what caused the breach and how to rectify it to ensure the breach never happens again (Thacker, 2014).

At the Lung Institute, we make it our business to safeguard our patients’ personal data. All employees who handle patient information are held to a high standard when it comes to information security. It’s wise to be vigilant of how your personal physician’s staff handles sensitive information. When hackers steal personal information, it can result in identity theft, a crime in which the criminal can pose as an individual by using the victim’s personal information online. Although the responsible professionals of the Lung Institute medical records staff make a supreme effort to protect customers’ and employees’ vital information, they can’t control what happens outside the Lung Institute offices. That’s why we’re offering these Lung Institute

In light of available security measures and their widespread acceptance within the information security community, there is no excuse for healthcare organizations to fail in fulfilling their duty to protect personal patient information. Guaranteeing the confidentiality and privacy of data in healthcare information is crucial in safeguarding the data of patients as there should be a legal responsibility to protect medical records from unauthorized access.

This study reports on the findings of an investigation at a family clinic owned by DR macgillicuddy to look at the issues surrounding the breach of personal health information and a virus attack within the computing and information technology field in the clinical site. This study was initiated to provide an understanding of the trends in, and the forces behind, virus attack and breach of personal