Healthcare Breach Notification Rules Take Effect; ID Experts Offers Complimentary Tool to Measure Organizations' Br...( BEAVERTON Ore. Sept...),Health

BEAVERTON, Ore., Sept. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Today breach notification regulations take effect under the HITECH Act. HIPAA-covered entities, including healthcare providers and business associates, are now required to notify affected individuals, the Secretary of Health and Human Services and sometimes the media, if a patient's unsecured protected health information (PHI) is breached. With these new rules in place and healthcare breaches accounting for over 66 percent of all records breached this year (according to Identity Theft Resource Center), ID Experts, the leader in data breach remediation, recommends that organizations evaluate their readiness and existing safeguards and put an incident response plan in place now. To help them get started immediately, ID Experts is offering a complimentary tool called Breach HealthCheck(TM) to assist organizations in establishing a Breach HealthCheck Index to evaluate whether their existing protections of sensitive patient information are adequate given their business exposure to data breach.

Breach HealthCheck

Breach HealthCheck is available free-of-charge for a limited time, for organizations that are subject to the new HITECH rules, by calling 1-866-726-4271 or by emailing BreachHealthCheck@idexpertscorp.com. The patent-pending tool, now available in an online version, is designed to measure an organization's business exposure and protection level. Using a mathematical model, Breach HealthCheck produces an index that measures an organization's business risk, preparedness and protection against the growing threat of breach incidents, so that organizations can take action.

"Patients trust healthcare organizations with their lives and they need to be able to trust them with their personal health information," said Bob Gregg, CEO o
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