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Idea Transcript
It’s happened again. In late June 2014 the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services had to notify over 1.3 million people that hackers had been illegally accessing their private data for over a year before it was discovered in May. Back in February a Texas Healthcare system reported a breach that compromised over 400,000 patients’ information. Data breaches are happening more frequently and on a larger scale, those are just two instances. If you’re running a small to mid-sized FQHC, that doesn’t take you off of the bad guys’ radar. In fact it makes it more likely that you have legacy/outdated security systems and policies making you more of a target. It’s not just your old firewall, lack of intrusion detection systems, or XP operating systems that put you at risk; it’s also a lack of formal policies and procedures, training, and culture. If your FQHC’s mission is important to the community, consider what would happen to your organization should a major data breach be discovered there. When you consider the risk, not only to the patients’ privacy but also to the welfare of your organization, it quickly becomes apparent that creating a culture of confidentiality and security needs to become a priority (both in effort and in cost). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released a Security Risk Assessment tool (http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/security-risk-assessment-tool) that can help you assess your organization. The software is a free download and operates on both Windows and Apple operating systems. Formal risk assessments are not only required as part of HIPAA’s omnibus ruling, but they are a great way to launch privacy and security initiatives within your organization. Don’t pass up this free tool.
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The Budget Control Act of 2011 mandated across the board reductions in government spending. In 2013 President Obama ordered a payment sequestration reducing Medicare fee-for-service payments by 2% across the board [1]. Medicare had been using Claim Adjustment Reason Code (CARC) CO-223 to communicate those adjustments.