Hey.. before we get going.. datapalooza 2023 is coming up! Register now!! CMS has released a Request for Information; National Directory of Healthcare Providers & Services which is due in a few days. This is a wonderful RFI because it shows that CMS leadership understands the issues and limitations of the current directories, NPPES and […]
Category: Uncategorized
O’Reilly shuts down its conferences. The end of an era.
O’Reilly Media has chosen to shut down its in-person conference business. This means no more OSCON, no more Strata, no more Foo. Let me start by saying I 100% support this decision. COVID must be taken seriously not just this year, but as a threat for the next two or three years. Laura Baldwin is […]
The MD Problem in NPPES
I am at the ONC Provider Directory 2019 Workshop. Here, I needed to quickly illustrate the problem with the NPPES broadcast of Credential Information. This blog post was the result. Credentialing is generally agreed to be out-of-scope for NPPES, however NPPES *does* accept free-text credential information. As a result of this, people type in basically […]
Patient comments on interoperability
Right now, I am writing a very long-winded submission to improving the interoperability of health information. This is regulation coming from Health and Human Services (HHS), specifically the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) and it will be the anchor of the way patient data flows in this country (or doesn’t) for […]
FOIA for updated HIPAA enforcement data
As many of you already know HHS has released an RFI for how HIPAA should be modified to support digital health information exchange as well as other important and needed updates. However, for those of us who are working on a response, we are crippled by the lack of current HIPAA enforcement data from OCR. As […]
Reviewing HIPAA enforcement data
As many of the twitterati already know there is an RFI from HHS for significant revisions to HIPAA, which is due Feb 12th 2019. In many of the issues that are covered under the current RFI, I feel very strongly that the answer is “You must have more substantial enforcement” from the Office of Civil […]
Hospitals frequently do not follow HIPAA access to records requirements.
According to researchers from Yale, as well as prominent ePatient activists Hugo Campos, Marilyn Mann and ePatient Dave: Hospitals frequently do not follow HIPAA access to records requirements. The patient community has known this for years, nice to see evidence is catching up. This is quite a criticism towards HHS Office of Civil Rights, which […]
Managing passwords for patient activists
Recently, I have been getting lots of requests from the patient community about how to manage passwords. Correct password management is not that hard, once you learn the rules, but it can be difficult to remember all of the things. So this going to be a 10000ft summary, with some links for those who want […]
Troll vs Russian Hypothesis for the Facebook MeToo Group Hack
Recently, a central Me Too Facebook Group was deleted by Facebook after it had been overrun with fake accounts intent on harassing its users. This was covered in a recent Wired article but so far it has not received too much media attention. Only the blurb summaries that complex articles like this sometimes receive in […]
Emergency AHRQ Backup
Recently, due to budget cuts at AHRQ https://guidelines.gov and https://www.qualitymeasures.ahrq.gov/ have been scheduled for shutdown. This blog post documents our efforts to mirror those resources and our reasons for doing so. We have published the raw files that we mirrored at http://ahrqqualitymeasures.careset.com/ http://ahrqguideline.careset.com/ Updates: Multiple different efforts to backup the websites have been successful. Take a look […]