In fairness to the person on the thread the other day: Now THIS is politics on the blog. :)
Morning Headlines 8/22/16
OCR Announces Initiative to More Widely Investigate Breaches Affecting Fewer than 500 Individuals
OCR Regional Offices launches an initiative aimed at increasing the number of investigations into data breaches affecting fewer than 500 individuals.
Harris’ US Healthcare group acquires digiChart, Inc.
Harris acquires OB/GYN EHR and PM vendor digiChart for an undisclosed sum.
Inside the Oddly Empty Hospital With the State’s Highest Cost Markups
A local paper profiles four-year old Texas General Hospital (TX), a 41-bed hospital that sits largely empty and bills Medicare, Medicaid, and private payers at out-of-network rates.
Cisco lays off 5,500 employees amid tech upheaval
Cisco lays off 5,500 employees, representing seven percent of its total workforce.
We have a real yin yang regulatory medical Information environment in the US. On one hand everyone is spouting interoperability, data portability, moving zillions of bytes everywhere, all at once. On the other hand, if you lose one byte, you must report it, then get hammered with fines. OCR spends all this time and money chasing down self reported breaches, and fining them. Worse, a big problem is cybercrime, more than lost laptops. Maybe we should spend more money on tracking those folks down. Its hard to argue with locked down medical silos, until we get a handle on security, cybercrime and how to deal with it.