Anthem
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JAMA Forum: Why Are Private Health Insurers Losing Money on Obamacare?
The report last week that Aetna, one of the major US health insurance companies, would leave most of the health insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 follows similar accounts the media that Anthem, Aetna, and other large private health insurers are contemplating withdrawing from the so-called ACA marketplace. The companies say the reason behind these actions is they are losing hundreds of millions of dollars on the business coming to them from these exchanges...
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Aetna CEO To Justice Department: Block Our Deal And We'll Drop Out Of Obamacare
It's not often in the midst of an antitrust fight that the public gets a look at the gamesmanship that's happening behind the scenes. But thanks to the Huffington Post's Jonathan Cohn and Jeff Young, we got a glimpse at how health insurer Aetna is making its case to acquire rival Humana — and new insight into Aetna's decision announced Tuesday to pull out of Obamcare exchanges in 11 states. The reporters obtained a copy of a letter from Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini to the Justice Department on July 5...
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Anthem Hack Exposes Privacy Failings At Health Information Exchange Created By Health Insurers
The day after Anthem Blue Cross revealed that millions of customers’ information had been hacked, Consumer Watchdog and Patient Privacy Rights called on Cal INDEX, the health information database created by Anthem and Blue Shield of California, to allow consumers to opt-in rather than force them to opt-out. “The Anthem hack makes clear that no company can guarantee their customers’ information will be protected. Without that guarantee, consumers must have the ability to prevent their information from being shared before it occurs,” wrote Carmen Balber, Executive Director of Consumer Watchdog and Deborah C. Peel, MD, Founder and Chair of Patient Privacy Rights in a letter to the CEO of Cal INDEX...
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Banner Health Cyberattack Impacts 3.7 Million People
Banner Health is contacting 3.7 million individuals whose personal information may have been accessed in a cyberattack that began on systems that process credit card payments for food and beverage purchases at Banner locations. The breach then expanded to include patient and health plan information. The Phoenix-based health system, with locations in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming, first learned of the attack on July 7, according to a company statement...
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Can SMART on FHIR Solve mHealth’s Medication Management Challenges?
An agreement to promote interoperability between three of the largest and most competitive EHR platforms has set the stage for a breakthrough in mHealth medication management. Using the SMART on FHIR app platform, providers will be able to access a patient’s entire medication history no matter where that data is stored. While this opens the door to better care management and coordination, it also gives patients the mHealth tools to manage their own care and collaborate with their doctors...
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Cost of a Breach: Forensics and Notification
Continuing our Cost of a Breach series that examines and breaks down the cost of a hospital data breach, this week’s post will take a closer look at the first two steps a hospital or healthcare institution must take after a data breach has occurred: forensics and notification. In the aftermath of a data breach, the first thing a healthcare organization must do is determine what electronic health records (EHRs) were illegitimately accessed and who accessed them; this process is known as data forensics...
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FBI Agent to CHIME Attendees: The Cybersecurity Environment Is Becoming More Dangerous
The level of cybersecurity threat is growing exponentially in healthcare right now, but there are some very clear strategies that the leaders of patient care organizations can and should do in order to fight back. That was the core of the message that Timothy J. Wallach, a supervisory special agent in the Cyber Task Force in the Seattle Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) told attendees Monday morning at the CHIME/AEHIS LEAD Forum Event, being held at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront in Seattle...
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Hacking Health Care Records Reaches Epidemic Proportions
In February 2015, Anthem made history when 78.8 million of its customers were hacked. It was the largest health care breach ever, and it opened the floodgates on a landmark year. More than 113 million medical records were compromised last year, according to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) under Health and Human Services. Consider it this way: if each case represented a single individual, one in three Americans would have been a victim...
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Strengthening Protection of Patient Medical Data
Americans seeking medical care expect a certain level of privacy. Indeed, the need for patient privacy is a principle dating back to antiquity, and is codified in U.S. law, most notably the Privacy Rule of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which establishes standards that work toward protecting patient health information. But the world of information is rapidly changing, and in this environment, U.S. rules fall precariously short in protecting our medical data...
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The Tragedy Of Electronic Medical Records
...Digitizing medical records was supposed to transform health care—improving the quality of care and the service provided to patients while helping cut out unnecessary costs...But lately, electronic medical record systems are getting nothing but votes of no-confidence from physicians, hospitals, insurers and IT experts...
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Will “Digital Fingerprint” Forensics Thwart the Data Thieves Lurking in Hospital EHR Corridors?
As Halloween approaches, the usual spate of horror movies will intrigue audiences across the US, replete with slashers named Jason or Freddie running amuck in the corridors of all too easily accessible hospitals. They grab a hospital gown and the zombies fit right in. While this is just a movie you can turn off, the real horror of patient data theft can follow you...Unfortunately, this horror movie scenario is similar to how data thefts often occur at medical facilities. In 2015, the healthcare industry was one of the top three hardest hit industries with serious data breaches and major attacks, along with government and manufacturers. Packed with a wealth of exploitable information such as credit card data, email addresses, Social Security numbers, employment information and medical history records, much of which will remain valid for years, if not decades and fetch a high price on the black market.
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