#hipaa

#hipaa

Alphabet's health tech subsidiary, Verily, used the health data of more than 25,000 patients without authorization and actively covered up those violations, a former company executive alleges. The executive, Ryan Sloan, claims Verily fired him after he discovered breaches of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, and reported his concerns to the company's senior management. Patient data in the U.S. is protected under HIPAA, which ensures the sensitive information cannot be disclosed without a patient's consent.

A treatment plan must be present in every visit note. Diagnoses listed in the chart must exactly match the billing codes. At the same time, patients expect and deserve our undivided attention. But balancing genuine human connection with the ever-growing checklist of documentation requirements is nearly impossible. Add to that the reality that we are people too, with families and demanding lives outside the office, and the strain becomes clear.

Teams will spend hours filing and managing them, only to repeat the exercise during audits. Plus, moving them between departments or into EHRs can be tedious and error-prone. And of course, storing and retrieving paper forms is inefficient and takes up space.

The healthcare landscape has undergone massive digital transformation since 1996 when the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was first enacted. We now face a surge in sophisticated cyberattacks powered by artificial intelligence (AI). According to recent data, nearly half of healthcare organizations experienced a higher volume of attacks than just a year ago, but only 29% feel prepared for AI-driven threats like deepfakes and synthetic identity fraud.

OCR found that BayCare failed to implement necessary policies for authorizing access to ePHI, leading to significant vulnerabilities in patient data security.