Healthcare organizations looking for better ways to protect their patient information and to understand the financial harm that can occur when protected health information (PHI) is lost or stolen may get assistance soon from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
Last week, ANSI--via its Identity Theft Prevention and Identity Management Standards Panel--announced it is partnering with the Shared Assessments Program to explore the financial impact of disclosure or breach of protected patient data. ANSI has developed standards for many industries, including HIPAA transaction sets; the Shared Assessments Program was created by a group of financial institutions to assess various security, privacy and business risks.
The new "PHI Project" will develop a report looking at those responsible for and entrusted with protecting and handling PHI within the healthcare industry. It also will examine how to make investment decisions to protect PHI, as well as how to improve responses if and when a patient information breach occurs.
The PHI initiative's advisory committee is made up of representatives from data security companies, identity theft protection agencies, standards developers, and privacy and security legal experts, according to Health Data Management.
Industry experts are invited to participate in the next meeting, via a free two-hour conference call on April 7, from 12 p.m. 2 p.m. Eastern. Interested parties can send an email to [email protected] to join in the work effort.
For more details:
- see the ANSI release
- read the Health Data Management article
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