Monday Musings

Happy Public Employee Recognition Week!

MobiHealth News reports that the National Institutes of Health celebrated the first anniversary of the All of Us public health res earch program, in which the FEHBlog participates, by unveiling its All of Us Research Hub. For more information on the All of Us program, click here.

The HHS Office for Civil Rights announced a $3 million HIPAA privacy and security rule violation settlement with Touchstone Medical Imaging.

In May 2014, Touchstone was notified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and OCR that one of its FTP servers allowed uncontrolled access to its patients’ protected health information (PHI).  This uncontrolled access permitted search engines to index the PHI of Touchstone’s patients, which remained visible on the Internet even after the server was taken offline. 

Touchstone initially claimed that no patient PHI was exposed.  However, during OCR’s investigation, Touchstone subsequently admitted that the PHI of more than 300,000 patients was exposed including names, birth dates, social security numbers, and addresses.  OCR’s investigation found that Touchstone did not thoroughly investigate the security incident until several months after notice of the breach from both the FBI and OCR.  Consequently, Touchstone’s notification to individuals affected by the breach was also untimely.  OCR’s investigation further found that Touchstone failed to conduct an accurate and thorough risk analysis of potential risks and vulnerabilities to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all of its electronic PHI (ePHI), and failed to have business associate agreements in place with its vendors, including their IT support vendor and a third-party data center provider as required by HIPAA.

The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that

As measles cases rose last week to a new high of 764 cases this year in 23 states, a battle is heating up in New York state over a proposal to tighten vaccination requirements for those attending schools. The new total is 60 cases more than a week ago, according to a weekly update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

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Only three states—California, Mississippi and West Virginia—ban religious exemptions for immunization, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Legislators in several states have pushed in recent months to remove parents’ ability to claim religious, philosophical or personal exemptions for vaccination.

That's a pendulum that needs to swing more in the public health protection direction, in the FEHlog's view.