Q. Can paper patient records be kept in a public storage unit? The storage company we are considering has a digital entry at the main gate. We would also have a keyed lock on the storage unit door.
St. Joseph's Medical Center in Towson, Md., reached a settlement with the United States to pay $4.9 million in connection with its submission of false claims to Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal healthcare programs, announced the Justice Department on February 7.
Although the results of the Ponemon Institute's Third Annual Benchmark Study on Patient Privacy & Data Security don't paint a pretty picture when it comes to protection of PHI, healthcare organizations can use the dismal statistics to improve compliance.
HHS released its biggest set of modifications to the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules with the January 17 unveiling of its long-awaited "HIPAA mega rule."
A former clinical director for Biscayne Milieu, a Miami-based mental health clinic, was sentenced to 100 months in prison for his participation in a Medicare fraud scheme involving the submission of more than $50 million in fraudulent billings to Medicare, announced the Assistant Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of Florida, the FBI Miami Field Office, and the HHS-OIG Office of Investigations Miami Office in a press release.
Law enforcement officials in Texas, Florida, and New York recently announced plea agreements and fines involving the billing of an unapproved prescription drug and Medicare fraud.
There are six generic approaches to managing risk, and the approach an organization chooses to use will depend on many factors. For example, how real is this risk? Can it actually become a problem, or is it merely theoretical? Management will want to decide whether the risk is likely to happen and whether it is possible to determine when it may happen. This will also assist in appropriate allocation of resources to focus on material risk areas.
One thing is certain: You don't want to wait until you receive a notification letter from OCR before you begin preparing for a HIPAA audit, says Dena Boggan, CPC, CMC, CCP, HIPAA privacy/security officer at St. Dominic Jackson (Miss.) Memorial Hospital.
You're reviewing a case file and discover that a patient's recent readmission is due to a medication prescribing error made by a physician. Do you report it?
