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In: EHR Security, HIPAA

In the September 2011 blog post, The Challenges of Meaningful Use in Small, Independent Practices, I reported on a talk given to a group of primary care practitioners and how their questions indicated they were having difficulties understanding MU requirements.   Perhaps the most surprising finding was that many attendees fromContinue Reading

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In: Audit Trails and EHR Systems, Databases, e-Discovery, EHR Architecture, EHR Certification, EHR Data Quality, EHR Design, EHR Security, HIPAA, Software Development, Tutorials

Two weeks ago I wrote about the value of EHR timelines and audit trails. Today’s post takes that discussion a little further by demonstrating various ways of keeping track of data accesses and changes in EHR data element values.   Of course, this functionality is useful for any clinical database thatContinue Reading

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In: Audit Trails and EHR Systems, e-Discovery, EHR Architecture, EHR Certification, EHR Design, EHR Security, Electronic Health Record Systems, HIPAA, Meaningful Use, Tutorials

As EHR use increases, the number of complaints about incoherent paper printouts has grown.  However, it isn’t just clinicians who are having problems.   EHRs Prove a Difficult Witness in Court , an article from the Journal of AHIMA, details the legal headaches that can occur as a result of theContinue Reading

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In: EHR Certification, EHR Security, HIPAA, Meaningful Use, Software Development

As someone starting a new software development project, I have a keen interest in ensuring that my product does not create HIPAA headaches for users.  Complying with the Security Rule’s technical safeguards seemed like a good start, so I decided to review their implementation specifications while developing security requirements. The technical safeguardsContinue Reading

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In: EHR Security, HIPAA, HIPAA Privacy, Meaningful Use, Small practices

Each of the three previous posts in this series addressed a different aspect of security: information security principles, HIPAA changes in the HITECH Act, and the components of the HIPAA security rule. The subject of this post is meaningful use objective 15, which states: Objective: Protect electronic health information createdContinue Reading