Network Infrastructure
Sutter Health executives say its health information exchange will enable doctors and hospitals -- inside and outside its network of care -- to securely share clinical information. The organization sees it as a game changer, one that will boost care coordination and clinical quality across Northern California.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has launched a federal probe into HIPAA privacy violations at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, according to an HHS spokesperson.
Data attacks on healthcare organizations have increased a whopping 100 percent from just four years ago, a reality that has chief security and information officers in a dash to stay ahead of the data protection curve.
Politics and poor management led to the breakdown of the government's health insurance website HealthCare.gov during its launch and in subsequent weeks, a new Senate report concludes.
A new survey from the AHIMA finds that 95 percent of the more than a thousand healthcare industry professionals queried believe that "high-value information" is essential for improving patient safety and care quality.
Imagine if almost everyone walking into your hospital -- patients, doctors, visitors, salespeople -- was carrying an active homing beacon, which broadcast, unencrypted, their presence and repeatedly updated exact location to anyone who chose to listen.
As anyone who's ever worked for IT security can attest, the job is no walk in the park. New threats, compliance mandates, vulnerabilities and updates are constant. But with strong leadership, and a culture of compliance and responsibility to match, many healthcare organizations have shown it can be done right -- and well.
The University of Cincinnati Medical Center is at the center of a legal battle that is the nightmare of every healthcare organization corporate counsel. The allegation is that a financial services employee of the hospital accessed the detailed billing records of a patient with a sexually transmitted disease and deliberately and maliciously published those records on Facebook, taunting and ridiculing the patient.
Healthcare's all about the patients, right? But far too often, there's a disconnect -- the idea that the care ends when the patient exits the building or a diagnosis is made, the idea that clinical deals with clinical and information technology deals with IT.
No matter what your job, there are certain phrases -- whether said by bosses, colleagues or clients -- that are just plain unwelcome: words that foretell frustration and added workload at best, panic and red-alert crisis response at worst. For hospital chief information officers, there's no shortage of these ominous sentences.