Posts by Josh Mayfield

In my previous post, we looked at the HIPAA Privacy Rule which mandates data protection of health information as a civil right. Boiling the rule down to its simplest form, HIPAA Privacy lays out what data requires protection and who is held accountable for keeping it confidential. However, it’s the HIPAA Security Rule that tells us how that data must be protected. Three Security Safeguard Categories The Security Rule...

Nearly every healthcare IT professional I’ve spoken to is seriously overburdened when it comes to protecting patient privacy. From annual security assessments to following breach protocols and everything in between, maintaining HIPAA compliance requires more than most IT departments are resourced to handle. Top of mind for most healthcare administrators however is the reality of non-compliance. HIPAA violations vary widely in both cost and root cause. In 2017 for...

There is a growing opportunity for IT teams to improve the standing of their IT asset management (ITAM) programs. If done properly, ITAM is really the beginning of any evidence-based decision process. “That which is asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence.” – Christopher Hitchens Interestingly, within all other aspects of life, we recognize that evidence is often needed to make a compelling argument stick. Every single metric tracked...

If you’re keeping score, 2018 healthcare data breaches have passed 6.1 million so far. The Office for Civil Rights updated their ‘the wall of shame,’ last month with a new member—UnityPoint Health—when 1.4 million records were reported compromised on July 30. The investigation for PHI violations is ongoing. Yes, cybercriminals want to get their mitts on protected health information (PHI). We all know this. But PHI’s guardians—providers, payers, clearinghouses,...

IT leaders are reinventing their infrastructures to support a mobile workforce and a complex array of connected devices. Against this backdrop of increased mobility and connectivity, healthcare IT is tasked with meeting compliance challenges in an intricate and transformational regulatory environment. With a host of new data protection regulations and increasingly high settlement fees for data breaches, data security has never been more important to healthcare organizations. Protected Health...