On July 16, 2008 Seattle based Providence Health and Services settled with
HHS (Health and Human Services) agreeing to pay them 100,000.00 and implement a detailed Corrective Action Plan (CAP) for violations that occurred on several occasions between Sept. 2005 and March 2006 when Providence employee’s removed backup tapes, optical disks, and laptops, all containing unencrypted electronic protected health information (ePHI) from hospital premises which were later lost or stolen. However, Providence’s cooperation with OCR and CMS enabled HHS to resolve this issue, without imposing any civil monetary penalty against Providence even though ePHI for 386,000 patients was compromised. The CAP that was implemented required Providence to provide training
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in processes and procedures to employees, as well as ensuring monitoring, policy adherence, and breach procedures. If it was determined that Providence failed to meet these guidelines, then HHS would proceed with the imposition of the civil money penalty. There was a Tolling of statute of limitations set for a civil money penalty that must be imposed within six years, from the date of the occurrence of the violation. I feel that the patient’s in this case were not even considered. There were 386,000 patients whose identifiable information was compromised. Their birth dates, SSN, addresses, and license numbers are all information that anyone could use to obtain, false identification, or obtain credit in someone’s name. The impact that could be felt on these patient’s credit histories could last for years to come. I also feel, that this could impact the relationship that one has between themselves and their doctor. If there is not a strict and forceful punishment to detour health facilities from being so lax, it could impede some people from seeking needed health care, due to concern for privacy. I would at the very minimum recommend that Providence be required to offer each patient a bi-yearly credit check, and if it was found that the patients identity had been stolen, that Providence pay for any fees or bad debt that had been incurred due to their error. I would also, require Providence to work with the patient to clear their credit and restore it back to the state it was when the breach occurred for a minimum of 6 years which is the same amount time as the Tolling statute of limitations. On January 16, 2009 CVS Pharmacy/Caremark reached an agreement with HHS to settle potential violations of the HIPPA privacy rule.
CVS/Caremark agreed to pay $2.5 million and implement a detailed CAP to ensure that protected health information of its customers was disposed of properly. It was reported by a media source that CVS’s employees were throwing away old prescriptions and labels from pill bottles into unsecured dumpsters that the public had access to. CVS/Caremark is one of the largest pharmacy chains and pharmaceutical distributors in the country with over 6,300 stores. Upon completion of the investigation conducted by HHS and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) it was revealed that although CVS had provided training to its employee’s it was not sufficient to cover the disposal of non-electronic PHI consistent with the Privacy …show more content…
Rule. CVS agreed to follow a CAP and oversight from HHS for 3 years, and also will require monitoring by the FTC for 20 years. The CAP will require CVS to have written policies and procedures on how training will be implemented as well as written and electronic documentation evidence that training occurred. The CAP also stipulated that CVS was to provide training to all its employees, within a minimum amount of time after being hired, and documentation was to be on file and available to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at all times during business hours. There were also requirements for accessors, retention and internal reporting. I believe that in this case that the ruling is fair. Only because on a pill bottle or a prescription, there is minimal amount of information. Typically, there would only be your name, your address and what you are taking. While I agree this is definitely a privacy violation, there is not any secondary damage that could happen by the information being thrown in the dumpster. Even though the judgement for $2.5 million, I feel that amount of money is just a drop in the bucket for CVS/Caremark. More than likely the sanctions that followed will be the reason that they will not violate the Privacy Rule again. Having the FTC on your doorstep for the next 20 years is enough to get anyone’s attention. On September 27, 2010 what was believed to be at that time the biggest settlement to date, HHS and OCR completed an investigation of New York and Presbyterian Hospital (NYP) and Columbia University (CU) regarding a complaint by an individual who found their deceased partners ePHI on the internet, who had been a former patient of NYP. It was discovered that NYP and CU participated in a joint arrangement in where CU faculty members served as attending physicians at NYP. The affiliation was referred to as “New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center”. During this affiliation they operated a shared data network, and network firewall. This was used by both entities to access patient ePHI information, and other information such as Patient status, vital signs, medications and laboratory results. The investigation revealed that a breach occurred when a physician deactivated his personally-owned computer server on the network containing information on 6800 NYP patient ePHI. This physician was employed by CU and was the developer of the application that linked the two sites. There were no technical safeguards in place, when this happened and neither entity ran an accurate risk analysis to ensure that NYP ePHI was secure. As a result, neither entity developed a Risk management plan to address possible threats to NYP’s ePHI. Also, NYP failed to follow their own policies that they had implemented for information access management. NYP agreed to pay $3,300,000.00 and CU agreed to pay $1,500,000.00 and both will follow a CAP which includes a Risk management plan, Risk analysis plan. Both will revise their policies and procedures, and be required to train staff as well as provide progress reports. In regards to the Tolling statute of limitations, the civil money penalty must be imposed within six years of the date of the occurrence. While, I feel the punishment was harsh enough, I still don’t feel as though the patients are being considered.
It is obvious in all three investigations that the patients are left to fight their court cases alone. When HHS, does these investigations they spend the tax payer’s money, and the money that they get from fining these health care facilities. Why is there no accommodations made for the patients? After all, that is the reason HHS, FTC and OCR are in business. I also feel that we should have a department that is set up to handle these cases, with lawyers to fairly prosecute these large companies for not following our laws correctly. I feel that as an individual it would seem like a very daunting task to win a judgement against a big corporation like New York Presbyterian, or CVS/Caremark even though the judgements against them will almost insure victory for the patients. I feel the government should stand behind these patients, and help them through a problem that could last for years. These days identity theft is on the rise. If we cannot expect the companies that require us to provide this information to process our claims, to handle it properly, then there should be recourse that doesn’t require long court
battles
The Texas Medical Institute of Technology, through programs such as Chasing Zero, is bringing a public voice to the issue of healthcare harm. The documentary is a stirring example of the quality issues facing the healthcare system. In 2003, the NQF first introduced the 30 Safe Practices for Better Healthcare, which it hoped all hospitals would adopt (National Quality Forum, 2010). Today the list has grown to 34, yet the number of preventable healthcare harm events continues to rise. The lack of standardization and mandates which require the reporting of events contributes to the absence of meaningful improvement. Perhaps through initiatives such as those developed by TMIT and the vivid and arresting patient stories such as Chasing Zero, change will soon be at hand.
In this case, the reader learns that liquidity is a better than average. The ratio and cash on hand have been better than 2013 from the past years. Moreover, it shows that the hospital has a higher ability to meet its cash obligation because it has more security compared to other hospitals. Funding allows hospitals to control funds and limit investments. Not-for-profit organizations help provide more services and margin of safety. Therefore, creditors look for a margin of safety so that the community that financed a small portion of total financing can be returned to the owners by leveraging. Capitalization ratio measures the funds that were borrowed and the assets that have been used. The coverage ratio measures the number that time they fixed financial charges. The time's interest earned ratio shows the ability of the hospital to meet
Membership Services (MSD) at Kaiser Permanente used to be a modest department of sixty staff. However, over the past few years the department has doubled in size, creating minor departmental reorganization. In addition the increase of departmental staffing, several challenges became apparent. The changes included primary job function, as well as the introduction of new network system software which slowed down the processes of other departments. These departments included Claims (who pay the bills for service providers outside of the Kaiser Permanente network), and Patient Business Services (who send invoices to members for services received within Kaiser Permanente). Due to the unforeseen challenges created by the system upgrade, it was decided that MSD would process the calls for both of the affected departments. Unfortunately, this created a catastrophic event of MSD receiving numerous phone calls from upset members—who had received bills a year after the service had been provided. The average Monday call volume had risen from 1,800 to 2,600 calls per day. The average handling time for each phone call had risen as well—from an acceptable standard of 5.6 minutes to an unfavorable 7.2 minutes. The department continued to be kept inundated with these types of calls for the two years that these changes have been effect.
Springfield General Hospital (SGH) is committed to high quality healthcare for patients, and providing tools to support physicians, nurses and pharmacists. SGH leadership approved the computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system as a solution to reduce prescription errors, and the results of the CPOE project are disappointing. The data show increased prescribing errors after implementing the CPOE; resulting in increased costs for adverse drug events, rather than the planned cost reduction (Spector, 2013). This change management plan provides the SGH board of directors and executive management team pragmatic steps to increase quality for patients by assessing the root issue of hospital
According to the report provided by the consultant, the employees at this facility were not taking precautions in safeguarding the patient’s health information. Therefore, the employees at this facility were in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA). It is important for employees to understand the form of technology being used and the precautions they must take to safeguard patient information.
Health Care workers are constantly faced with legal and ethical issues every day during the course of their work. It is important that the health care workers have a clear understanding of these legal and ethical issues that they will face (1). In the case study analysed key legal and ethical issues arise during the initial decision-making of the incident, when the second ambulance crew arrived, throughout the treatment and during the transfer of patient to the hospital. The ethical issues in this case can be described as what the paramedic believes is the right thing to do for the patient and the legal issues control what the law describes that the paramedic should do in this situation (2, 3). It is therefore important that paramedics also
The cost of Medical equipment plays a significant role in the delivery of health care. The clinical engineering at Victoria Hospital is an important branch of the hospital team management that are working to strategies ways to improve quality of service and lower cost repairs of equipments. The team members from Biomedical and maintenance engineering’s roles are to ensure utilization of quality equipments such as endoscope and minimize length of repair time. All these issues are a major influence in the hospital’s project cost. For example, Victory hospital, which is located in Canada, is in the process of evaluating different options to decrease cost of its endoscope repair. This equipment is use in the endoscopy department for gastroenterological and surgical procedures. In 1993, 2,500 cases where approximately performed and extensive maintenance of the equipment where needed before and after each of those cases. Despite the appropriate care of the scope, repair requirement where still needed. The total cost of repair that year was $60,000 and the repair services where done by an original equipment manufacturers in Ontario.
... of potential threats such as unauthorized access of the patient information. Health care leaders must always remind their employees that casual review for personal interest of patients ' protected health information is unacceptable and against the law just like what happened in the UCLA health systems case (Fiske, 2011). Health care organizations need clear policies and procedures to prevent, detect, contain, and correct security violations. Through policies and procedures, entities covered under HIPAA must reasonably restrict access to patient information to only those employees with a valid reason to view the information and must sanction any employee who is found to have violated these policies.In addition, it is critical that health care organizations should implement awareness and training programs for all members of its workforce (Wager, Lee, & Glaser, 2013).
. HIPAA privacy rules are complicated and extensive, and set forth guidelines to be followed by health care providers and other covered entities such as insurance carriers and by consumers. HIPAA is very specific in its requirements regarding the release of information, but is not as specific when it comes to the manner in which training and policies are developed and delivered within the health care industry. This paper will discuss how HIPAA affects a patient's access to their medical records, how and under what circumstances personal health information can be released to other entities for purposes not related to health care, the requirements regarding written privacy policies for covered entities, the training requirements for medical office employees and the consequences for not following the policy.
...fines for breaches. There were federal grants and/or incentives for those organizations and individuals that chose to use the EHR via the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. The people are so sure that the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act would work that they even provide incentives for training programs so that the people can be well educated and knowledgeable in regards to the EHR system. We all have medical records in some physician's office and we would like to know that our medical history is kept safe from those who does not have permission to access our information. Since the HITECH Act allows a variety of random audits, healthcare organizations and individuals will work harder to ensure that they are up to par on all of the federal guidelines in regards to their patients privacy and security.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, most commonly known by its initials HIPAA, was enacted by Congress then signed by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1996. This act was put into place in order to regulate the privacy of patient health information, and as an effort to lower the cost of health care, shape the many pieces of our complicated healthcare system. This act also protects individuals from losing their health insurance if they lose their employment or choose to switch employers. . Before HIPAA there was no standard or consistency for the enforcement of the privacy for patients and the rules and regulations varied by state and organizations. HIPAA virtually affects everybody within the healthcare field including but not limited to patients, providers, payers and intermediaries. Although there are many parts of the HIPAA act, for the purposes of this paper we are going to focus on the two main sections and the four objectives of HIPAA, a which are to improve the portability (the capability of transferring from one employee to another) of health insurance, combat fraud, abuse, and waste in health insurance, to promote the expanded use of medical savings accounts, and to simplify the administration of health insurance.
...ts to cover their mistakes. This is the exact opposite of what the country needs. Why should costs go up because of denied treatment? The big concern is whether or not government really understands the great difficulty in trying to control HMO’s and other health care programs without a nationalized program. Since there are some 6 million people using Medicare in HMO’s something needs to be done to ensure these patients the treatment that they need.
The Key points of this article is to show the consequences when violating HIPAA and to show how the Office of Civil Rights is taking action to try and secure the patient's information. The
patient history is neglected resulting to a serious health crisis or ever death and lawsuits.
HIPAA, Privacy Act and other major healthcare laws put emphasis on security of healthcare data and information. A major or minor breach can cause an organization to face legal liability that can lead to loss of goodwill (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, 2015). The