Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 - (Page 12)

SECURITY WHO SEES WHAT? Do you ensure that your staff members are able to gain access only to the patient information they need to do their jobs? that in his previous paper-based ofﬁce, he recalls an instance in which a ﬁle clerk easily pulled a speciﬁc paper chart she was unauthorized to view — her ex-husband’s. The practice ﬁred the employee when it learned what she’d done, but not before she shared the stolen information with others. Of course, the practice also had to inform the ex-husband about the incident. Certainly, this was nothing FOUND ON EBAY In a bizarre turn of events that gives new meaning to the word “ironic,” a laptop purchased in Manchester, England, on eBay was found to contain conﬁdential information after the buyer dropped it off at a small IT company for service in February. When a company engineer disassembled the computer, he discovered a disk marked “Home Ofﬁce Conﬁdential” hidden beneath the keyboard. According to its Web site, Britain’s Home Ofﬁce is the government department “responsible for leading the national effort to protect the public from terrorism, crime, and anti-social behaviour.” The managing director of the IT company told reporters, “The disk appeared to be hidden deliberately underneath the keyboard. We put the disk in the drive to see what it was, but it was encrypted.” The company called the police, which restored the computer to the Home Ofﬁce. How the laptop ended up on eBay remains a mystery, and the Greater Manchester police are continuing to investigate. to call a press conference about, but it was a privacy violation for which the practice was responsible, nonetheless. “From my personal experience,” says Weida, “the protection for inadvertent or malicious access to charts is better electronically than it used to be when we had paper charts. With paper charts, anyone could go to the chart rack, open it up, and look at the full chart. If they were really slick people from outside, they could throw a stethoscope around their neck and put on a white coat and ﬂip through records. … I would say that the information is more secure now than it was before even though more people have the potential to access it, and that’s because we can track every access.” Electronic charts may be better protected than paper, but they’re hardly failsafe. Indeed, Weida reports that his current practice, which uses an EMR, also experienced an incident in which a woman snooped through her ex-husband’s medical records. In this case, recalls Weida, “the initial excuse was that she needed his new address. But our IT department was able to look at that record, realize that she opened it more than once, maybe about ﬁve or six times, and also realized that she was not just opening demographic data. She was terminated. We have a very strong policy on that here. You only get one strike, and you’re out.” One signiﬁcant difference between the incidents: The EMR-based practice didn’t have to ﬁnd out through the grapevine about the security breach or launch a he-said/she-said investigation. The computer kept a record of each accessed ﬁle. Another difference: The EMR practice was able to implement additional security protocols to prevent further breaches. The ofﬁce network now has a built-in mechanism to ensure that only those authorized individuals can view sensitive patient information. The bottom line: Both paper and electronic charts are vulnerable to theft or loss. But while paper records carry their inherent vulnerabilities, a stolen or improperly accessed laptop can reveal much more patient data than a single paper ﬁle. Although the healthcare industry has in general been slower to adopt new technologies, the electronic age has dawned, and there’s no turning back. You can no longer operate an efﬁcient practice without some type of software containing patient data. And like most new technologies, these capabilities bring with them new opportunities for criminal activity. AN OUNCE OF PROTECTION Still, most people give little thought to the consequences of stolen hardware until it happens to them. When Mark Anthony LaPorta, an internist in Miami, purchased a software-based theft protection service for his new laptop a couple of years ago, it was little more than an afterthought. His fancy new computer cost him $2,000, and paying an additional $105 for three years’ theft protection seemed to make sense. “I was going to be carrying a big brand-new laptop around,” says LaPorta, “so I thought, ‘Let’s protect it and see what happens.’ I’m amenable to that sort of thing. … I thought ‘Oh well, after three years, I’ll forget about it; nothing will happen.’” Turns out he didn’t have to wait long before something did happen. A few weeks later, while traveling on a speaking circuit, LaPorta received a call from his local police, informing him that his house had been broken into. He was told that nothing appeared to be missing, but when he returned home he discovered that the shiny new computer he had left sitting on his coffee table was gone. WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM 12 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | TECHNOLOGY GUIDE http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 TG Cover Story: Protect Your Practice and Sleep Better Operations: Paperless? Not Quite The Internet: You've Got Mail...Or Do You? Patient Relations: Attention Grabbers The Tech Doctor: All About Blogs Lessons Learned: 'My EMR Nightmare...And Why I'd Do It Again' Scheduling: No More No-Shows The Marketplace: Who's Got Your Back IT Enhancement: Time, at Last, for an Upgrade? Online: 'Yup, I'm a Junkie. And Proud of It.' In the Office: New Technologies in the Workplace: Blessing or Curse? Web Surfing: If You Build It...

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

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