It’s Your Call February 2022

OSHA: Has OSHA relaxed any of the covid-19 guidance for employers? No. Although the Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) has been withdrawn, OSHA is working towards a permanent regulatory solution and will enforce the general duty clause and general standards. Therefore, employers should continue to provide adequate protections against covid-19 for healthcare employees. This includes, but […]

HIPAA AND BATTLING PARENTS

hipaa battling parents article

Dealing with a minor’s medical records can be a minefield when a child is from a blended family or the parents have a contentious divorce going. Things get especially sticky when you add in stepparents and grandparents, and when a minor controls all or a portion of their own records. It’s a good time to […]

HIPAA: DISCLOSING COVID-19 VACCINATION STATUS

HIPAA Disclosure

HHS has published an article on the HIPAA Privacy Rule’s effect on the disclosure of COVID-19 vaccination status for healthcare. The following are excerpts from the article. For the full text see: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/hipaa-covid-19-vaccination-workplace/index.html. Remember that HIPAA is not the only set of laws that regulate this information. Does the HIPAA Privacy Rule prohibit businesses or […]

FDA Alert – Medtronic Recalls Paradigm and 508 MiniMed Insulin

medical machine

The FDA has identified this as a Class I recall, the most serious type of recall. The use of these devices may cause serious injuries or death. Recalled Product All MiniMed Remote Controllers (model MMT-500 and MMT-503) are used with a Medtronic MiniMed 508 insulin pump or the MiniMed Paradigm family of insulin pumps. Reason […]

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month!

TMC’s Security Scout wants you to be Cyber Savvy!   Did you know? 43% of cyber-attacks target small businesses. Here’s how you can be Cyber Savvy: Use long, strong passphrases or passwords and different passwords for different programs and devices. See last month’s Advisor for password tips. Watch out for phishing emails and text messages! […]

FBI and the federal CISA have issued a ransomware awareness alert

scam for OCR alert

The FBI and the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued a ransomware awareness alert for the upcoming holiday weekend. The FBI and CISA have observed a trend of increased attacks around U.S. holidays. Businesses are more vulnerable when there are fewer workers in the office or workers are more distracted than usual […]

Help With HIPAA & Periodic Security Awareness Training

Introducing TMC Security Scout! Help With HIPAA & Periodic Security Awareness Training Ensuring workers have annual training that covers all the HIPAA Rules (Privacy, Breach Notification, and Security) is an essential part of a successful compliance program. Reading TMC’s monthly newsletter, The Advisor, and filing a signed copy of the last page with your training […]

Audit Logs

August 2021 A covered entity recently discovered that a former employee had “snooped” (inappropriately accessed) over 10,000 patient records almost 4 years after the snooping began. The employee accessed the records in the EHR over a period of about 14 months. That’s over 700 records per month. The snooping went undetected until the former employee […]

Diabetes App Security Advisory from CISA

monitor

Patients and physicians who have the diabetes apps/devices listed below and use the mylife Cloud and/or mylife Mobile Application should update to the current version of the application and update account passwords ASAP as a security measure. The app is not secure and not sufficiently protecting usernames and passwords making their data vulnerable to exposure/hacking. […]