To support the sudden increase in test results and medical records being transmitted during the pandemic, hospitals, laboratories, and pharmacies implemented additional devices and remote connections into their networks. After the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) lifted penalties around telehealth to expand care options amid the crisis, new platforms were adopted that were not previously allowed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This exercise of discretion
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More Than 45 Million Medical Images Are Openly Accessible Online
What You Should Know: - CybelAngel tools scanned approximately 4.3 billion IP addresses and detected more than 45 million unique medical images left exposed on over 2,140 unprotected servers across 67 countries including the US, UK, and Germany. - The report highlights the security risks of publicly accessible images containing highly personal information including ransomware and blackmail. The analyst team at CybelAngel, a global leader in digital risk protection, has discovered
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M&A: Imprivata Acquires Patient Privacy Intelligence Company FairWarning
What You Should Know: - Imprivata acquires FairWarning Technologies, a provider
of patient privacy intelligence. - The combined solutions will offer healthcare a single Digital Identity platform that integrates role-based access controls, identity governance, and data privacy compliance. Imprivata®, the digital identity company for healthcare, today announced the acquisition
of FairWarning
Technologies, LLC, a Clearwater, FL-based provider of patient privacy intelligence.
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COVID-19 Underscores Need for Identity Governance Administration
If you work in healthcare, chances are that the COVID-19 pandemic forced you to quickly scale up or move staff around to manage the onslaught of patients. The demand for clinicians and support staff grew alongside the spread of the virus, making organizations add clinicians or reassign employees with new or modified roles: Ambulatory nurses went down in the Emergency Department or Isolation Ward, revenue cycle folks started doing transport, and so on. In some cases, former staff or retired
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CommonWell Enables Payer Access to Nationwide Interoperability Network
What You Should Know: - CommonWell Health Alliance enables payer access with the addition of a new service provider, DataFile Exchange to support the operational services specific to the Payment and Health Care Operations use case. CommonWell
Health Alliance today announced it is extending its interoperability
services to enable additional use cases beyond treatment and patient access,
starting with Payment and Health Care Operations data requests. Data File Exchange
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3 Telemedicine Security and Compliance Best Practices
The coronavirus pandemic accelerated telemedicine exponentially as patients and doctors switched from in-person visits to remote consultations. Health providers rapidly scaled virtual offerings in March and April and traffic volumes soared to unprecedented levels, with practices “seeing 50 to 175 times the number of patients by telehealth than before the outbreak,” according to McKinsey. By early August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services expanded the list of
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Getting Beyond the Telehealth ‘Stop-Gap’ Mentality
Since COVID-19 emerged as a major health threat, virtual care has taken off. As many as 46% of patients reported in late April that they had used telehealth to replace a canceled healthcare visit in 2020, while 48% of physicians said they had started using telehealth to treat patients. While a shift in care models was necessary to address business continuity amid the pandemic, these trends also represent positive movements as a growing body of evidence supports the real-life benefits of
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Amidst the Pandemic, IT Teams Turn to the Cloud to Protect Patient Data
The challenges facing healthcare during COVID-19 are more than biological. Healthcare providers are weathering a perfect storm as hackers take advantage of the commotion and ramp up their attack frequency and sophistication. This isn’t surprising for those familiar with the hacker playbook, as cybercriminals typically go after victims that are the right combination of vulnerable and profitable. And right now, the valuable troves of personal health data held by providers, focused on battling
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New Attacks, Regulations, and Stakes Call for New Security Strategies
The amount of data generated by the healthcare industry is staggering—and constantly increasing. Healthcare data encompasses the personal information of patients, doctors, nurses, and administrators. It includes diagnostic information, test results, ultrasound images, x-ray images, and of course insurance and financial information. With so much sensitive patient information there for the taking, it comes as little surprise that the healthcare industry—perhaps more than any other sector—has
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Telehealth and COVID-19: Overcoming New Challenges for Providers and Payers
Telehealth has quickly transformed the healthcare industry. Rather than scheduling an appointment, waiting up to a few weeks, and going to a doctor's office or another healthcare facility, we can now access many types of care from the convenience of our smartphones. However, telehealth has also brought in its own set of new challenges that must be overcome for it to be successful in the long term. Below, we explore five of the biggest issues telemedicine faces and offer insights on how
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