The Issue And Its Importance

Anthem is a medical insurance provider that currently serves over 74 million people. On December 10, 2014, Anthem was victim to a data breach that resulted in over 37 million personal records being hacked from their servers. Fortunately, the attack was contained to only one day, but it was still enough to become one of the largest data breaches in corporate history. Shockingly, the hack wasn’t actually discovered until January 27, 2015. What lead to the discovery was when a data administrator discovered a query that was started using his own credentials (Ragan). Just over a week later - on February 4th - Anthem announced that there had been a massive data breach to the public. The breach was so severe, that even Anthem’s own CEO, Joseph Swedish, said that his personal information along with several other Anthem associates were taken during the breach.

Anthem Inc. is one of the largest health benefits company in this country. The merging of WellPoint Inc. and Anthem Inc. in 2004 was the start to this healthcare company. Anthem Inc. is a part of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. They serve people primarily in 14 different states (“Company History, n.d.). At that point in time, it was the largest healthcare security breach in our history (Weise 2015). During 2015 in the month of February, Anthem Inc. announced to the public that it had suffered an attack that affected 78.8 million individuals. The Breach began around February 18, 2014 and was eventually discovered in late January 2015 leading to the announcement early February 2015. It was also concluded that the perpetrator of

An unfortunate reality in today’s society is the gross overrepresentation of persons with mental illness in the criminal justice system. According to Teplin (1984), persons with mental illness have been found to be almost twice as likely as individuals without any known mental illness to be arrested for their behavior in similar situations. Furthermore, several other studies have even shown that roughly half of all persons with a mental illness have been arrested at least once in their lifetime (Solomon & Draine, 1995; Walsh & Bricourt, 2003). Although these statistics seem to further support the common belief among many citizens that mentally ill persons are dangerous criminals, research indicates that the mentally ill are more often arrested for nonviolent minor charges (Cuellar, Snowden, & Ewing, 2007). Not surprisingly, a considerable portion of individuals within the criminal justice population have a diagnosable mental illness. According to Ditton (1999), 7% of federal inmates, 16% of state inmates, and 16% of jail inmates have a mental illness. These percentages may be inflated because persons with mental illness tend to spend longer periods of time in custody than those without a mental illness. Perhaps the greatest indication of the brokenness of the system is the fact that there are more mentally ill persons in jails and prisons today than in public psychiatric hospitals (Lamb& Bachrach, 2001). In fact, according to the

Hospital and health facility administrators face hardened criminals who hack medical records with ever-increasing sophistication. Hackers gain access to critical information, such as medical claims, financial data, Social Security numbers and credit card data that enable identity theft, credit card fraud and other privacy breaches. One of the major security failures in the news was the CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield attack that exposed 1.1 million of its members to thefts of their personal information.[1] Combined with high-profile breaches at Anthem and Premera Blue Cross, the breach illustrates the changing role of medical administrators

In August 2000, Kaiser Permanente Online experienced a serious security breach, due to a flawed script written in the pharmacy refill application. The security breach concatenated several hundred individual e-mails containing personal patient data. As a result of the breach, 19 members received Private Health Information (PHI) about other members. Kaiser Permanente was made aware of the breach when two members notified the organization that they had received the concatenated e-mail messages.

In August 2000, Kaiser Permanente Online experienced a serious breach in security. The security breach concatenated several hundred individual e-mails containing personal patient data. As a result of the security breach, 19 members receiving private data about other members. Kaiser Permanente was made aware of the breach when two members notified the organization that they had received the concatenated e-mail messages.

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.

report that ?? percent of healthcare organizations experienced at least one data breach. In addition, this research introduced two major causes of data breaches that most of healthcare organizations suffered. First is . Second is . Further, when the organization is full compliance with HIPAA privacy and security requirement, it would lead to reduce data breaches and improve the privacy and security of patient's

Social issues have plagued the women and minorities of our country for decades upon decades, degrading them as if emotions and morals were not evident amongst them. The article entitled "Affirmative Action" states that as representation of minorities and women became more and more necessary, a movement called "affirmative action" became an important issue. Affirmative action is not limited to the uplifting of certain genders and races, but it focuses on establishing standards of certain ethical codes. Affirmative action concentrates on a broad array of issues including equal opportunity, systematic exclusion, and diversity.

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

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).

The 5 Whys is an understood critical thinking tool. At first created in 1970's by Sakichi Toyoda to enhance the Toyota generation, it is presently taught in business colleges the nation over and all around archived on YouTube, and so forth. By asking 5 Whys to an issue, you can rapidly get from issue to conceivable

The rapid changes in technology over the past few decades has left the healthcare industry ill-prepared to operate in today’s environment. Most substantial protections of sensitive consumer information has come as a result of federal regulation, most notably in 1996 with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Protection of information in the healthcare industry has lagged behind all other industries, perhaps because the records aren’t financial in nature or sensitive government information. Implementing simple steps for many organizations may be enough to limit the vast majority of breaches, although a layered, comprehensive security approach should be the ultimate goal for companies.

Diabetes is a systemic disease caused by a decrease in the secretion of insulin or reduced sensitivity or responsiveness to insulin by target tissue. (Beale, et al., 2011) The incidence of diabetes is growing rapidly in the United States and worldwide. An estimated 347 million people around the world are afflicted with diabetes. (Whalen, et al., 2012) According to World Health Organization (WHO), Diabetes prevalence among adults over 18 years of age has risen from 4.7% in 1980 to 8.5% in 2014. It is the major cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attack, stroke and limbic amputation. World Health Organization (WHO) projects that diabetes will be the 7th leading cause of death in 2030. It is a complex and costly disease that can affect nearly every organ in the body and result in devastating consequences. The leading cause of non-traumatic lower extremity amputations, renal failure, and blindness in working-age adults, diabetes is also a major cause of premature mortality, stroke, cardiovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, congenital malformations, perinatal mortality, and disability. (Cefalu, 2000) Insulin therapy and oral hypoglycemic agents have demonstrated improvement in glycaemic control. However, Insulin therapy has some disadvantages such as ineffectiveness following oral administration, short shelf life, of the need for constant refrigeration, and fatal hypoglycaemia, in the event of excess dosage.