Audit criticizes OCR and ONC over data privacy efforts
HHS's own Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a scathing report regarding pervasive breaches in privacy and security of patient data. OIG specifically called out the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), charged with enforcement of HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, for failing to investigate and punish the vast majority of violators.
The audit tested seven hospitals' compliance with HIPAA in seven different states, and found 151 vulnerabilities in the systems and controls intended to cover e-PHI, 124 of which were categorized as "high-impact" (i.e., ones which may result in costly losses, injury or death.) Violations included unencrypted wireless connections, easy passwords, and even a taped-over door lock on a room used for data storage. Via Modern Healthcare:
The audits of the seven hospitals revealed weaknesses in hospital IT defenses of electronic protected health information, or ePHI, ranging from the fact that several hospitals still were using obsolete and vulnerable encryption protocols to the fact that all seven had vulnerable access controls in which “Outsiders or employees at some hospitals could have accessed, and in one hospital did access, systems and beneficiaries' personal data and performed unauthorized acts without the hospitals' knowledge.”
“These vulnerabilities placed the confidentiality, integrity and availability of ePHI at risk,” the auditors said. The individual hospital audit reports were not disclosed “because the reports contained restricted, sensitive information that may be exempt from release under the Freedom of Information Act,” according to the report.
OIG also criticized the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) for their failure to develop standards ensuring privacy and security of patient data as part of ARRA's push for digitizing medical records:
As a yardstick for ONC performance as a security champion, the inspector general's auditors reviewed last year's ONC-developed interim final rule and final rule on standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for the ARRA-funded electronic health record system incentive payment program. The auditors found both wanting.
The report's authors differentiated between two types of security measures. One they described as “application security controls” that “function inside systems or applications to ensure that they work correctly.” Such measures include security controls covered by the ONC final rule and used in testing and certification of electronic health-record systems as able to meet meaningful-use requirements for providers participating in the federal IT incentive payment programs. An example is a requirement that certified EHRs be able to encrypt data shared between providers.
The auditors called the other type of measures “general information technology security controls,” described as “structure, policies and procedures that apply to an entity's overall computer operation.”
An example would be a policy that requires providers to use encryption software on their systems and encrypt all data copied from an EHR and placed on a portable storage device, such as a laptop, CD or a portable thumb drive. The auditors found that the ONC had included application controls in writing its interoperability specifications for meaningful use, but that "there were no (health IT) standards that included general IT security controls.”
Other examples of general controls not addressed by the ONC but suggested for development by the report would be requirements that providers use two-factor authentication to gain access to an organization's health IT system and policies that mandate that organizations install “patches” or bug fixes in a routine and timely manner to computers that process and store EHRs.
"Audit reports hit HHS on digital security," Modern Healthcare (May 17, 2011).
CMS announced that the online Attestation System for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program will launch on April 18, 2011. Eligible professionals and eligible hospitals will be able to use this online portal to self-attest to meeting the Meaningful Use criteria.
Dr. David Blumenthal, the head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), announced yesterday in a letter to his staff that he's leaving the ONC and returning to his position at Harvard University. .gif){kind=logo}
Via 
On August 19, 2010, the "tiger team" advisory panel 
On July 13, 2010, CMS issued the final rule defining "meaningful use" and establishing the parameters and requirements for eligible professionals, hospitals and other providers to receive incentive payments provided under the HITECH Act for widespread adoption of electronic health records. According to 
On July 7, 2010, HHS issued a notice of proposed rule making (NPRM) regarding the changes to the HIPAA Privacy, Security and Enforcement Rules, as provided in the HITECH Act, in order "to strengthen the privacy and security protections for health information and to improve the workability and effectiveness of the HIPAA Rules." 
On June 7, 2010, Maryland's Lt. Governor Anthony Brown 
In a letter to Dr. David Blumenthal, the College of Healthcare Information Executives (CHIME), an organization which represents1,400 healthcare chief information officers, offered some criticism of ONC's recent notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) regarding the EHR certification program. While CHIME expressed general support for a two-stage approach for creating the certifying bodies, the CIO's are worried about any destabilizing effects such rule may have on the health IT market. Via .gif){kind=logo}
A group of 37 U.S. Senators sent a .gif){kind=logo}
The Office of National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) 
Joy Pritts, a researcher and faculty member at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute, was named as the first Chief Privacy Officer for the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT. This position was created pursuant to a provision in ARRA, last year's economic stimulus legislation..gif){kind=logo}
The Office of National Coordinator for Health IT named 17 members of the newly formed privacy and security workgroup of the HIT Policy Committee. According to 