Posted on March 30, 2009 by Steve Fox and Vadim Schick
- After what has become a rather typical breach of patient privacy for Southern California, Kaiser Permanente fired fifteen employees (and disciplined eight additional employees) for looking at the medical records of Nadya Suleman, the mother of octuplets commonly referred to as "Octomom". Previously, similar breaches occurred at UCLA when that medical center's staff leaked celebrities' medical records to the tabloids. (MercuryNews.com, via AP, March 30, 2009.)
- Wall Street Journal reported last week that HIT stocks, especially smaller companies, like eClinicalWorks (which provide the software component of Wal-Mart's new EHR package) will benefit greatly from the billions of dollars in HIT funding included in the stimulus bill. Also, in another sure sign of a growing industry, Quality Systems, the maker of the NextGen EHR software, is "beefing up its sales force." ("Stimulus Funds for E-Records Augur Big Windfall for Small Health Firms", Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2009.)
- A new bill is introduced in the Pennsylvania Senate that would ban businesses from collecting personal data from driver's licenses. This should also serve as a good reminder for businesses not to collect or store more information than absolutely necessary. (Pennlive.com, March 30, 2009.)
- Perot Systems will launch a new service tomorrow (April 1, 2009) to help hospitals achieve "meaningful use" status under HITECH, geared towards meeting the interoperability and standardization of HIT use. (Healthcare IT News, March 30, 2009).
