720-891-1663

KY/WV Regional Healthcare System Hit by Something – Maybe Ransomware

Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH), which operates two hospitals in West Virginia and nine in Kentucky reported over the weekend that it was the target of a cyberattack that forced staff to revert to paper. No email, no electronic health records, no other electronic systems.  Just paper. The hospitals are assessing whether to transfer critically ill […]

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Health and Human Services Issues New Guidance on Ransomware

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights, the government entity that manages the privacy of health care information that you share with doctors and others, has issued new guidance on ransomware. While technically, it only applies to organizations that they regulate, in reality, almost everything they said applies equally to […]

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Failure To Follow Minimum Required Practices

I  have written several times about the fight between Cottage Health System and Columbia Casualty, a division of CNA Insurance. In 2013 Cottage’s systems were breached and the private information of thousands of patients was publicly disclosed.  Their insurance company paid $4.125 million for costs related to the breach, including a class action lawsuit. That […]

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Systema Leaves Insurance Claims Data In The Cloud – Unprotected

Databreaches is reporting that someone discovered a large amount of data on a public segment of Amazon Web Services.  This person, described as a technology enthusiast (i.e. a geek) downloaded some of this data and discovered it contained medical claims data. The repository, which supposedly contained gigabytes of data was later identified to belong to […]

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Office Of Civil Rights At HHS Starting Up Audits Again

The Office Of Civil Rights (OCR) has been pretty quiet these last couple of years regarding HIPAA audits, but that may be about to change. OCR’s staff is small, so they have hired a contractor, FCI,  according to the Federal Register. In an interview, deputy director Deven McGraw says that they will be starting up […]

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