If you attended the 2012 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition, held in Las Vegas at the Venetian Sands Expo Center from Feb. 20-24, you were part of a record-breaking event. As of Friday morning, attendance at HIMSS12 reached 37,032 attendees, surpassing the HIMSS11 attendance figure of 31,500 attendees. They participated in more than 300 ...

The Association of Health Information Outsourcing Services (AHIOS), an organization committed to promoting excellence in the handling and dissemination of confidential patient-identifiable information, gathered for its annual Fall meeting in Orlando, FL, on Sept. 30, following the annual American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) ...

The Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will host a free day-long public Roundtable on ''Personal Health Records - Understanding the Evolving Landscape'' on Dec. 3. The Roundtable is designed to inform ONC's Congressionally mandated report on privacy and security requirements for non-Covered Entities ...

Rite Aid Corp. and its 40 affiliated entities have agreed to pay $1 million to settle potential violations of the HIPAA Privacy Rule, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced. In a coordinated action, the company also signed a consent order with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle potential violations of ...

(Editor's note: The following is a message from Dr. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, posted on May 14, 2010.) Private and secure health information exchange enables information to follow the patient when and where it is needed for better care. The Federal government is working to enable a wide range ...

While interviewing for my articles on HITECH requirements for medical transcription service providers and independent contractors (ICs), I couldn't help thinking, ''I am so glad I just write about this stuff.'' I never would want to handle the stress of HIPAA compliance and, quite frankly, I wouldn't even know where to start. Encryption? I guess ...

Last month, I reported that the Office for Civil Rights had posted a list of covered entities with privacy breaches affecting more than 500 patients. The list is part of the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) new obligations under HITECH. Well, it looks like they're keeping the log up-to-date. I was tipped off by PHIprivacy.net that ...

In another HITECH milestone, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has posted a list of covered entities (CEs) that reported breaches affecting 500 or more individuals. The list, available to the public via OCR's Web site, fulfills an obligation outlined in last year's HITECH Act. CEs have been required to report such breaches since last ...

What a week it's been for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Aside from celebrating the first anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), officials introduced several new comrades to the public. On Feb. 17, Joy Pritts was named chief privacy officer in the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health ...

It's Friday--time to catch up on the news. I was hoping to share a delightful health-related story with you, but there were too many good ones, and who am I to single out? So, on to a list we go; I'll leave it up to you to pick and prune according to your preferences. CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen explores record access issues ...