Kaiser Permanente, a prominent not-for-profit health plan and provider in the US, has revealed a data breach that exposed 69,000 medical records in HIPAA compliant device.
Kaiser Permanente is a nonprofit organization that was established in 1945 and currently serves over 12.5 million patients across 8 states in the United States as well as the District of Columbia.
On April 5, 2022, an unauthorized individual gained access to the email account of an employee at the company. Which contained protected health information (PHI) pertaining to patients. This information was made public by the corporation in the form of a notification that was published on its website.
In a letter dated June 3, 2022, Kaiser Permanente informed those whose information had been improperly accessed about the circumstances of the illegal access that had been made.
As a direct result of the attack, the sensitive information listed below was made public:
- The complete name of the patient
- Numbers assigned to medical records
- Times and dates of services
- Specifics concerning the findings of several laboratory examinations
During this breach, the corporation claims that sensitive information such as Social Security numbers and credit card details were not exposed to the public in any way. Patients who were enrolled in the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in Washington were the only ones affected by the security breach.
This overall incident of data breach gives us a lesson to store data in HIPAA-compliant devices.
HIPAA Compliant Devices
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was made into legislation in 1996 by former President Bill Clinton. He is in an effort to safeguard the confidentiality of medical patients’ personal information.
While HIPAA has significantly strengthened the protection of patient information. Complying with its requirements can be difficult for data security professionals who are responsible for keeping vast amounts of critical data.
The two concepts of data security and HIPAA data compliance are commonly misunderstood. However, HIPAA compliance is only the beginning of the process of ensuring the safety of healthcare data in the cloud and across numerous networks.
Safeguarding medical records So long as the network the data is stored on is protected from unauthorized access. HIPAA compliance guarantees the privacy of patient information.
Why store data in HIPAA compliant device
A Defense Against the Disclosure of Protected Health Information
Your business will immediately profit from HIPAA because it will serve as a safeguard against the loss of protected health information (PHI). Loss of protected health information, also known as PHI, is a severe crime that can have very significant consequences.
When a healthcare institution suffers a loss of protected health information (PHI). It puts the patients it serves as well as the sensitive data they maintain in danger. Every time you walk into the office, you and other members of your business will have multiple interactions with personally identifiable and confidential health information.
Every time you deal with protected health information (PHI), you are presented with the choice to either expose or safeguard the information of patients. You are provided with a guaranteed mechanism for ensuring that every person in your company understands how to keep the protected health information (PHI) of patients safe, secure, and secret thanks to HIPAA compliant device.
To put it another way, as long as you comply with HIPAA compliant device regulations. The legislation will serve as a physical shield for you and your staff against any claims that are related to PHI. Implementing HIPAA policies and procedures effectively within your healthcare business has the potential to make or break your team.
When you make the decision to comply with the HIPAA requirements. You can rest assured that the information you handle is being safeguarded appropriately. Which in turn will protect you from legal action.
Enhanced awareness of the Health and Safety of Patients
As those who work in the healthcare industry. We are all aware of the fact that the health of our patients is our primary concern. What we might not fully comprehend is the significance of information and private data to the overall health of a patient.
A lot of people who work in healthcare, despite the fact that they care very much about their patient’s physical health. Fail to realize how important it is to protect their patients’ personal health information (PHI). Compliance with HIPAA presents an opportunity for staff workers to receive training on the appropriate ways to handle patient information.
In addition, by providing your employees with training and education regarding HIPAA. You equip them with the resources necessary to not only comprehend the significance of PHI but also to properly protect it.
They will be able to provide your team with the appropriate HIPAA privacy laws training. Explain to your patients exactly how crucial it is that these laws are followed.
The Evolution of a Patient Safety Culture
Your healthcare organization’s culture is crucial to the health and well-being of your patients. In fact, it’s vital to the overall performance of your facility. When commercial and public healthcare businesses adhere to and execute HIPAA protocols. They are able to establish a far better patient-centric culture.
How? By demonstrating to facility employees the need of protecting a patient’s PHI as part of their treatment path. Protecting a patient’s PHI, for example, aids in fall prevention, prescription records and safety protocols, and infection control and reduction. When employees implement HIPAA protocols correctly, they help to decrease the margin for error by another member of the team.
They also help to protect patient’s health and safety by ensuring that their personal and medical records are kept private. When you establish this type of culture from the start. You are ensuring that your facility has the resource. Information necessary to keep each patient who walks through your doors entirely protected and safe.
What HIPAA compliant device should we use?
HIPAA compliant device USB afford an unprecedented degree of safety for individual medical files. The Secure Disk flash drive is a HIPAA-compliant solution for storing sensitive patient information in a hidden, password-protected partition.
Access to the patient’s medical records (or any other records) is restricted by a password chosen by the user. When using this technique, the USB controller on the flash drive itself verifies the entered password before granting access to the secret partition.
Leave a Reply