Compliance & Legal
The Food and Drug Administration, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and Federal Communication Commission hosted a workshop this past week where panel members representing the IT and mobile world participated. For the most part, the constituencies endorsed the risk-based regulatory approach proposed in FDA's Safety Innovation Act.
To those shirking their HIPAA privacy and security duties: get ready to pay up. That's the message the Department of Health and Human Services is sending after it set records Wednesday for imposing the largest HIPAA monetary fine to date on two entities found to be seriously lacking in the security arena.
Think the chances of getting a meaningful use audit are slim? Tell that to the folks who lost their job for doing it wrong, or folks at the four-hospital Scripps Health, who, all told, have undergone 11 meaningful use audits to date. Some say mock audits are indeed the right prescription.
In a year where "compliance and enforcement is really where the action is going to be," it might help to have some advice on how to keep on the right side of patient privacy law.