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HIPAA Data Backup Regulations Shouldn’t Be Ignored
Posted by Silicon Cloud on Thu, Apr 14, 2011
It is well known that healthcare organizations have the most complex and demanding systems where the protection of data is concerned.
Containing individual patients’ medical histories, this data is highly sensitive and is therefore governed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
To date, fines on healthcare organizations have been rare but this February the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) fined the Massachusetts General Hospital $1 million for losing the medical records of 192 patients. This fine is only the second of its kind.
The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) also issued a statement saying that they hoped the fine would alert the healthcare industry to the fact that the OCR is serious about enforcing HIPAA and protecting patient’s information. In this particular instance, the files that were lost were not electronic but the same law applies. If an email that contains patient information is lost or hampered with, healthcare organizations are exposed to the same kinds of penalties. The answer: Encrypt all backup files and emails.
The only other previous case where a healthcare organization was fined involved the Cignet Health of Maryland. In that case Cignet was fined $4.3 million dollars when they failed to produce requested patient information. Most worryingly of all, when the information was initially requested from Cignet, they produced lots of files, but none of them were the right files.
This suggests that healthcare organizations do not take HIPAA very seriously. In one survey when doctors were asked about the importance of protecting data, many doctors responded by saying that when doctors start going to jail, they would start encrypting their data files. In reality, doctors don’t need to wait for such drastic action when data protection and business continuity services that include encryption could provide them and patients with all the security they need.
If you would like more information about data backup and protection, contact NorthStar Technology Services today.
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