Health And Finance Article

HIPAA, Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, defines rules and requirement on privacy and security practices of health care information. In Title II, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) outlines regulations for the use and dissemination of individual health care information.These rules apply to covered entities, including health plans, health care clearinghouses, such as outsourced billing companies and community health information systems and health care providers that transmit health care information in a way that is regulated by HIPAA. [Code of Federal RegulationsTitle 45, Volume 1]The Privacy Rule establishes regulations for the use and disclosure of Protected Health Information (PHI). PHI is any information about health status, provision of health care, or payment for health care that can be linked to a person. This includes any part of a patient’s medical record or payment history. [Code of Federal Regulations. Title 45, Volume 1]Security Rule deals specifically with Electronic Protected Health Information (EPHI) and requires Administrative Safeguards – policies and procedures designed to clearly show how the entity will comply with the actCovered entities that out-source parts of their business processes to a trusted third party must ensure that their vendors also have a framework in place to comply with HIPAA requirements. Companies typically gain this assurance through clauses in the contracts stating that the vendor will meet the same data protection requirements that apply to the covered entity. Care must be taken to determine if the vendor further out-sources any data handling functions to other vendors and monitor whether appropriate contracts and controls are in place.A contingency plan should be in place for responding to emergencies. Covered entities are responsible for backing up their data and having disaster recovery procedure. The plan should document data priority and failure analysis, testing activities, and change control procedures.Internal audits play a key role in HIPAA compliance by reviewing operations with the goal of identifying potential security violations. Audits should be both routine and event-based.In order to have an online backup that is HIPAA compliant you need to meet all the requirements of the Final HIPAA Security rule dated February 2003 and required after April 21, 2005.  You should ensure that a backup provider exceeds the standards set in the security rule by encrypting all data before it is sent over a secure SSL connection to the remote backup service. An effective solution is to have the Encryption Key generated by the customer and is known only to the customer and to ensure that the Key is not transmitted to the HIPAA compliant online backup server.  A HIPAA online backup provider should encrypted the data on the server with military grade encryption and not accessible to the backup provider or employees.  Ensure that the local backup client encrypts all data prior to transmission to the remote systems. Data can only be recovered by transmitting it back to the local client that decrypts the data using the encryption key.

National Association of Professional Background Screeners – NAPBS
The National Association of Professional Background Screeners was founded in 2002 as a U.S. based non-profit trade association. According to Robert Capwell ,Background Screening Expert and one of the organization’s founding members and Past Board Co-Chairs, “NAPBS was founded to unite background screening firms with a national voice [...]

Throughout the historic 2008 presidential campaign, much attention has been given to the personalities of the candidates. Many know that John McCain survived a horrific ordeal as a POW in Vietnam. Many know that Obama was raised by a single mother in Hawaii, who sometimes had to go on welfare to support her children. And [...]

The 2008 election has brought the topic of “affordable health care” and “affordable health insurance” to the forefront and, along with it, a slew of misconceptions. So, what is true and what is false? The purpose of the following article is to dispel some of these myths and misconceptions and provide information to make a [...]

In 2009, the Black Book APO Industry user survey investigates over 500 contracts held by 1500 of the top spending organizations and conglomerate corporations globally.18 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or criteria are employed, scored on each respective vendor by client type and ranked on a 0-10 scale per KPI.Key FindingsKey Finding: Most Important Customer Satisfaction [...]

IntroductionThe Drinks MarketWatch contains the latest news, analysis and opinion, covering all the month’s major issues including mergers and acquisitions, marketing and regulatory issues. It covers the period from November 15 – December 14 2009.Scope*Geographic coverage: global*Category coverage: drinksHighlights Drinks MarketWatch provides monthly insight into the key events in the drinks industryReasons to Purchase*Gain monthly [...]

Though the recent campaign for presidency brought affordable health care into the limelight, many small business owners and their employees felt this struggle long before it gained public attention. One of President Obama’s campaign calling cards is his plan for affordable health care. Intertwined within the general theme of affordable health insurance was the more [...]

While telecoms and media have not featured as campaign issues, they will nevertheless be hot political topics in the near term following the election. Given the way in which the Digital Economy Bill was rushed through Parliament there are some issues which naturally must form action items for the next government. In this report we [...]