Insult to Injury During A Crisis: SIM Swap and Other COVD-19 Scams Affecting Patients and Providers

Why Should You Attend:

The purpose of this webinar is to ensure providers do not fall prey to hackers or the newly arisen scams and those which have intensified during this global health crisis, in the telehealth space. Learn how to protect ePHI during this time of OCR’s excusable penalty time. Discover how to identify threats that will not only put patients’ information at risk, and but risk providers identity. In this webinar, you will identify security threats of telehealth platforms, and hackers’ tools.

Office of Civil Rights has relaxed HIPAA regulations and possible penalties which may be incurred. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is responsible for enforcing certain regulations issued under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, to protect the privacy and security of protected health information, namely the HIPAA Privacy, Security and Breach Notification Rules (the HIPAA Rules).

The OCR released a notification, during the COVID-19 national emergency – a nationwide public health emergency, covered health care providers subject to the HIPAA Rules may seek to communicate with patients, and provide telehealth services, through remote communications technologies.

In an effort to meet demand, some of these technologies, and the manner in which they are used by HIPAA covered health care providers, may not fully comply with the requirements of the HIPAA Rules. Consequently, OCR will exercise its enforcement discretion and will not impose penalties for noncompliance with the regulatory requirements under the HIPAA Rules against covered health care providers in connection with the good faith provision of telehealth during this COVID-19 emergency.

With telehealth functioning as a leading form of communication between providers and patients, an array of platforms are being utilized to connect. Response to the global health crisis presents opportunities to utilize technological advances for communication, however, these platforms are being utilized in an era in which Facebook has received the largest privacy violation, in U.S. history - $5 billion. Even though, providers are practicing with weakened HIPAA rules during this time, payors are held to the same standard and penalties for privacy and security breaches will not be excused. Thus, payors are making determinations with regard to what platforms may be utilized.

The challenge for hospitals and providers is ensuring telehealth services receive pay from Medicare and Medicaid. Understanding the various platforms and the OCRs expectations helps to ensure reimbursements.

SIM swapping is the one of the most lucrative scams on the rise. COVID-19 has intensified hackers desire for black market data; however, SIM swapping can not only affect patient data, it can also put the provider at risk.

Areas Covered in the Webinar:

• Understand SIM Swapping and how it affects telehealth; and
• Learn to identify COVID-19 scams
• Understand the expectations of the OCR during the COVID-19 scams
• Execute BAAs with Skype for Business / Microsoft Teams, Zoom for Healthcare, Google G Suite Hangouts Meet, Cisco Webex Meetings / Webex Teams, Amazon Chime, GoToMeeting

Who Will Benefit:

• HIPAA professionals
• Hospital Administrators
• Clinicians using telehealth platforms
• Healthcare Providers using telehealth platforms
• Information Security professionals

Free Materials:

• IT Health articles on COVID- 19 scams
• §164.312 Technical Safeguards Checklist
• Notification of Enforcement Discretion for Telehealth Remote Communications During the COVID-19 Nationwide Public Health Emergency

Coy Murchison
Owner, Berry Herring Hayes and Associates

Coy Murchison is the owner a boutique consulting company – Berry, Herring, Hayes & Associates. She serves on several boards. She is most proud of her work as the first vice-chair, establishing the Alliance For A Brighter Community (“ABC”) Foundation. An organization which supports post-baccalaureate dreams of disadvantage students and families. However, she is most proud of her two boys which are the greatest joy in her life.

She has functional knowledge and expertise in both HIPAA privacy and security, and considered the ideal candidate to build newly imagined compliance platforms which captured threat prevention and security protocols of medical devices within hospital IT infrastructures.

As an accomplished healthcare compliance consultant for 15-year,- Coy Murchison has successfully trained large and small healthcare institutions on HIPAA compliance. She has served as a HIPAA privacy expert with proven results. In the evolution of HIPAA, she has attained accreditations as an implementation manager and recognized as a change agent in establishing compliance programs which aids in the ease of applicability of an amalgamated program to ensure patients’ health information is protected from unauthorized exposure.

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