medicaid services news from FierceHealthIT

A new study by the Government Accountability Office has concluded that the systems used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to send and receive bills and communicate with providers are riddled with at least 47 security holes. According to the GAO, the CMS network hasn't implemented sufficiently secure user identification and authentication, user authorization, system boundary protection, cryptography, and auditing and security event monitoring. CMS also failed to make …

You'd get a lot of "maybes" and a fair sprinkling of "no's" if you asked that question at many medical facilities, according to an outstanding piece in the Detroit News that focuses on General Motors and its frustrations with its healthcare providers' inefficiency and reluctance to use the latest IT tools. "Hospitals have only so much capital to invest," notes Henry Ford Health System CEO Nancy Schlichting. "If it's between improving facilities, medical technology and EMR …

Thieves recently stole 10 computers from an HCA regional office, potentially compromising the personal data of thousands of Medicare and Medicaid patients in eight states. The personal information of thousands of employees and physicians who tended to patients is also at stake, authorities said last week. Authorities suspect the crime is a part of a series of computer thefts by people looking to make money from hardware, not data. HCA did not disclose where or when the thefts took …