Identity Theft Resource Center Case Analysis

Improved Essays
With massive data breaches populating the headlines in recent years such as the recent breaches at Target and Home Depot, healthcare institutions are actively strengthening their arsenal against threats to patient history information (PHI). According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC, 2015), data breaches in healthcare accounted for 44 percent of all breaches in 2013, and that is expected to only inflate each year. A data breach is an incident when confidential data has been stolen or viewed by unauthorized individuals (Anandarajan, D'Ovidio, &Jenkins). In healthcare PHI is a high-value target due to the breaches that includes stolen prescriptions, fraud, and identity theft.

This discussion will focus on what Risk Managers could do to put policies and procedures in place to protect healthcare organizations like Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC). CAMC is an 838 bed non-for-profit tertiary medical Center (CAMC, 2015). CAMC promotes a robust performance improvement environment that employees over 7,000 employees that all work to provide the highest level of quality for every patient every day. As a Risk Manager for CAMC and working with Administration and our Information Services Department, we would first need to acknowledge the HIPAA-HITECH Security Rule that governs privacy in healthcare. The ruling states that we will pursue practices for protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic PHI of its patients.
…show more content…
As a Risk Manager you would need to work in collaboration with many departments specifically to ensure that all is being done. Understanding that CAMC is an High Reliability Organization (HRO), it is important to look at nothing is ignored or overlooked in training. A major part of that would be the implementation of policies that would

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Working alone, I immersed myself in this environment and worked toward removing inefficiencies, security oversights, and business continuity issues. As I hope you’ll see, the high-security, HIPAA-compliant environments that I’ve worked in have exposed me to policies, products, and procedures that I can bring to your organization to help strengthen your information security program. Additionally, my expertise in securing iOS and Android mobile devices means that I can help mitigate threats to this increasingly significant portion of your computing…

    • 320 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Describe the responsibility of the medical office specialist to protect all protected health information (PHI). Here are my thoughts based on all that I have learned in this program over past few months. The medical office specialist (MOS) has a legal responsibility/duty to maintain the security of protected health information (PHI). The sharing of PHI is controlled by the privacy rule contained in HIPAA.…

    • 957 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nt1330 Unit 3

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Describe the responsibility of the medical office specialist to protect all protected health information (PHI). When it comes to protecting patient information, it’s about getting employees to understand how to best protect it and what to do if there is a data breach. Training is essential and should include not only administrative employees, like medical office specialist, but also doctors, nurses, and other clinicians throughout the organization. All employees with access to patient information need to have the understanding of how to maintain security protocols when it comes to patient care. Many clinicians tend to look at PHI breaches as simply an IT issue.…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Telichia Johnson HIMS 417 March 07, 2015 Summary: Redefining HIM Privacy and Security Role In the article “Redefining Health Information Management Privacy and Security Role,” the authors report on the historical role of the Health Information Management (HIM) professional in privacy and security, several evolutionary changes, and the need to extend access to patient information beyond normal patient care. In a period of constantly changing regulations and continual evolutions in technology, the Health Information Management profession’s roles and responsibilities will have to be extended to meet industry demand, and more reliance on Health Information Technology (HIT) to process and manage data and information. A more increased role…

    • 371 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Healthcare landing page SEO: HIPAA COMPLIANCE - 5 Page title: HIPAA Compliance Endpoint Security How Visibility, Control & Automated Response Helps Healthcare Organizations Compensate for BYOD and IoT security Gaps The rise in IoT, BYOD and mobile devices, has made network endpoints one of the most vulnerable security gaps in most networks. What makes the healthcare industry unique, is its need to secure information while maintaining the delicate balance between patient privacy and the need for readily available information to ensure efficient, accurate diagnosis and treatment.…

    • 370 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the healthcare field medical malpractice lawsuits are expensive and detrimental to a health care provider’s career. EMRs can play a more active role in potential litigation because the documentation is organized, easy to read, and is more patient detailed than the paper records. The patient providers will be unfamiliar with this new EMR system and require some special training to comply with the HIPAA Privacy Rule. HIPAA is the first comprehensive federal regulation that governs the privacy and confidentiality of patient-specific information. Maintaining those patients’ privacy and confidentiality during EMR implementation is a valid legal concern that needs to be addressed to the committee and hospital.…

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Problem Statement: Patient data security is an ongoing and evolving problem in healthcare. According to the US Census Bureau, US Department of Health and Human Services, “143 million patients’ records have been compromised over the past five years…” (Zeadally, Isaac, & Baig, 2016). A patient’s medical record information is a highly sought after commodity among hackers, cyber criminals, and identity thieves because it contains “personal, insurance, and financial information”. They are able to sell this information for “up to $251 per record” as opposed to stolen credit card numbers, which they are only able to sell for “33 cents per number”.…

    • 1371 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Healthcare is an important organization that is a private sector which is an essential part to preventing one’s personal files from social access of being exposed. In the recent 2000’s, the HIPAA law has been developed and created in order to prevent legally any health organizations from leaking or giving out any information to persons or individuals without a patient’s consent. All healthcare organizations are legally obligated to have all patients to fill out a HIPAA form and store it in their charts. One can prove that their information was violated based on if their spouse or employer was given information regarding their records without consent. A formal consent or document should be filled out stated that their spouse or employer is not…

    • 222 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Health Insurance Probability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted by Congress in 1996 in response to the infancy of health information technology and the modern flow of health information. The initial focus of the HIPAA was to protect health insurance coverage for workers and their families if they were to lose or change their jobs (Bowers, 2001) but, as technology continued to advance laws were also developed to protect patient information as it passed through a full spectrum of patient care. HIPAA rules was the first effort to standardize the flow of data by, “encouraging electronic transactions as a primary means to conduct business in an effort to also reduce cost and improve efficiency” (Bowers, 2001). HIPAA Privacy Rule…

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    To maintain this security in the future nurse executives must maintain education related to security and privacy issues and bring it back to their organizations. Also it is important that the proper use of electronic and written information in regards to patient’s EHR be followed. It is imperative that health organizations having continual education on informatics and proper use of such. The avenue of nursing informatics is only going to expand in our time as nurses and it is our duty to ensure we are working on behalf of our promise to provide privacy to those we care for. According to Simpson (2013), It is time for nurse executives to enlist the help of academic leaders and regulators in the effort to build learning infrastructure capable of the competencies needed by nurse…

    • 1241 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Technology is an important factor in today’s society especially in our healthcare system. The advancement in technology is on the rise and it is always changing and updating. The healthcare system is making their way to convert all their medical records electronically; although this can be a good transition, it can also pose a problem. Electronic health records have not been perfected and there are still risks for breaches and potentially a big possibility of disclosing patient’s important medical and personal records. On September 8, 2011, Nemours, a Children’s Health System reported missing three unencrypted computer backup tapes that were locked and stored in a cabinet in the Nemours Health System facility in Delaware.…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As the guardian of patient health information, healthcare organizations should know that there are a number of actions they can take to assure their EHR system are secure. A few examples of these prevention measures include anti-malware, intrusion prevention, data loss prevention, and authentication programs. Lastly, it is crucial for healthcare entities to understand the security of patient data is an ongoing responsibility which requires a reassessment over…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There have been numerous cyber-attacks in the medical world over the past several years that have compromised millions of people personal information. Hackers have been taking advantage of hospitals weak security encryption systems to access the public’s personal records and identity information. The purpose of these attacks are to basically attain people’s Social security numbers, credit card info, health insurance information and emails in order to sell them in the cyber black market. Cyber security within healthcare revolves around the laws and procedures that are already in effect within the healthcare system.…

    • 367 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    To continue this effort, it is advised the providers promote comprehensive programs and forums to help employees gain knowledge in the compliance arena. Such programs like HIPAA compliance, risk mitigation, HIPAA compliance in Laboratory and Retail pharmacy will help healthcare sectors minimize the risk of patient information being compromised and keep sensitive information safe and…

    • 945 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    HIPAA Case Study Answers

    • 2168 Words
    • 9 Pages

    First and foremost, I agree with the conclusion of part 6.1. As someone currently employed in the field of Information Technology, Security is very critical to ensuring that HIPAA is not breached with any of our clients. The biggest subsets as laid out in this case study are Information Privacy, Risk Management, Access Controls, Firewalls, Intrusion Detection, and VPN’s. Again, as someone who works within the medical field performing IT, Privacy is incredibly important for not only my end users, but the clients. The information transmitted from select departments to other select departments that pertains to either employee or client information must be kept encrypted and unintercepted, and thus we hit the next big issue of Risk Management.…

    • 2168 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays