Its Time To Check, How Safe Are The Safety Nets?

By Author: Jaun Paul
Total Articles: 53
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There are issues of privacy compliance not being followed religiously and thereby putting at stake the protected health information (PHI) of many patients. Now can we afford to this? Would it really matter if we still put the privacy policy on the back burner? It is not such a good idea to be non-compliant, after all it accounts for the patient's privacy. Last year, the most controversial news was about an unencrypted hard drive being lost with about 1.5 million patients' information on it being put to risk.


It is high time we take the HITECH Act seriously and start paying attention. HITECH main focus is to ascertain that patient information privacy is maintained to the highest possible level and there should be no breach. Patient privacy is certainly gearing up to take the center stage.


During the present practice, employees take work home and bring laptops and mobiles with them to the office. So, how to keep a check and be vigilant that no data is being leaked? Encryption ...
... of data would be the answer, though it is not bound by law to code or encrypt it. However, there is a provision where the Act talks about breach notification, so encryption would make you secure and safe. This is because if the breach occurs when your data is encrypted, you are still sailing the safe boat. Encryption is recommended specially for protecting information on any type of medium that can easily be transported outside the organization like hard drives, USB keys, or CDs. Now that encryption is done, don't ruin the safe net by using passwords that are easy to crack. It is highly recommended that you use some strong passwords, which involve a series of letters, numbers, and/or symbols. For more info and update keep hooked to Healthcare IT News.


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