Becker's Hospital Review

62 CIO / HEALTH IT Why AMA, AHA are pushing back against Apple's Health Records By Andrea Park P roponents of new federal rules allow- ing providers to share medical records with third-party apps say they will em- power patients to take control of their health- care — but groups such as the American Medical Association and American Hospital Association are not convinced. e AMA, AHA, American College of Ob- stetricians and Gynecologists, and more have voiced their opposition since HHS proposed the new regulations earlier this year, e New York Times reported. According to these orga- nizations, once medical data has been trans- ferred from secure, federally protected EHR systems to consumer apps such as Apple's Health Records, they will be vulnerable to a whole host of potential privacy violations. "Patients simply may not realize that their genetic, reproductive health, substance abuse disorder, mental health information can be used in ways that could ultimately limit their access to health insurance, life insurance or even be disclosed to their employers," Jesse Ehrenfeld, MD, an anesthesiologist and chair of the AMA's board, told the Times. "Patient privacy can't be retrieved once it's lost," Dr. Ehrenfeld added. Brett Meeks, vice president of policy and legal for the nonprofit Center for Medical Interop- erability, proposed that a secure data-sharing platform should be put in place before re- cords can be shared with third-party apps. "Facebook, Google and others are currently under scrutiny for being poor stewards of consumer data," Mr. Meeks told the Times. "Why would you carte blanche hand them your health data on top of it so they could do whatever they want with it?" In response to these concerns, however, Don Rucker, MD, an emergency physician and the HHS' national coordinator for health informa- tion technology, said the new rules will not only empower patients, but also give tech companies the tools to develop improved health products. Dr. Rucker also suggested physicians and hospitals' main grievance with the rules are not their potential data abuses, but rather the loss of any financial benefit that may come from having a monopoly on medical data. "All we're saying is that patients have a right to choose as opposed to the right being de- nied them by the forces of paternalism," he told the Times. n Hackers steal California hospital's website domain, email addresses By Jackie Drees S onoma (Calif.) Valley Hospital was forced to change the name of its website URL and email addresses after its domain, svh. com, was hijacked Aug. 6, Sonoma Index-Tribune reported. After SVH realized it would not regain possession over the do- main, it began transferring all internet connectivity to its new do- main: sonomavalleyhospital.org and @sonomavalleyhospital.org. SVH was fully transferred to the new domain by Aug. 13, and "at no time was patient care or privacy compromised during this in- cident," hospital CEO Kelly Mather told the publication. The hos- pital registered its previous domain svh.com in September 1996, and the expiration date was Sept. 22, 2021. It's not unusual for three letter domain names, such as svh.com, to be hijacked since they are "hard to come by," said Blaine Tran- sue, co-founder of web design and development company Wild- FireWeb, according to the report. "Any other organization that uses that acronym – in the world – would pay handsomely to get their hands on it, probably to the tune of thousands of dollars if not much more," Mr. Transue said. "So it will likely be resold at some point." SVH asks that patients update their contact information listed for the hospital because emails sent to @svh.com are not being de- livered to hospital staff. n Stolen laptop puts health information of 7,000 Texas hospital patients at risk By Mackenzie Garrity F loresville, Texas-based Connally Memorial Medical Center notified 7,358 patients Aug. 16 that their protected health information may have been exposed. Connally Memorial learned June 21 that a laptop that stored patient information was stolen. The lap- top belonged to a business associate at the hos- pital and was stolen April 23. Although the laptop was password protected, it was not encrypted. Patient data that may have been affected included names, dates of birth, specialty referral information, gender, ethnicity and internal tracking numbers. A limited number of patients may have also had their diagnosis, reason for transfer, date of transfer and hospital transferred to information exposed. No medical records, Social Security numbers, ad- dresses, financial information or insurance infor- mation were affected. Connally Memorial is updating its business associ- ate agreement to include a requirement for the use of encryption on all portable devices. n

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