Becker's Hospital Review

12 CIO / HEALTH IT 6 Largest HIPAA Settlement Fines of 2016 By Erin Dietsche 2016 served as evidence of two looming and growing issues in health IT: data breaches and HIPAA settlements. Not only did the number of data breaches and cyberattacks increase throughout the year, but HHS' Office for Civil Rights also continued aggressively enforcing HIPAA regulations. Here are six of the largest HIPAA settlement fines in 2016 as reported by Becker's Hospital Review. 1. Advocate Health Care (Downers Grove, Ill.): $5.55 million. In the big- gest HIPAA payment involving one entity to date, Advocate agreed to pay $5.55 million to HHS' Office for Civil Rights to settle claims it violated HIPAA. 2. Feinstein Institute for Medical Re- search (Manhasset, N.Y.): $3.9 mil- lion. e Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, a biomedical research institute that falls under the Great Neck, N.Y.-based Northwell Health enterprise, agreed to settle potential HIPAA violations for $3.9 million. 3. University of Mississippi Medical Center (Jackson): $2.75 million. e medical center agreed to pay $2.75 million and adopt a corrective action plan to resolve HIPAA violations concerning a stolen laptop that breached the information of approxi- mately 10,000 individuals. 4. Oregon Health & Science Univer- sity (Portland): $2.7 million. OHSU signed a resolution agreement with HHS' Office for Civil Rights regarding two data breaches from 2013 that included a $2.7 mil- lion payment. 5. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (New York City): $2.2 million. NewYo- rk-Presbyterian Hospital agreed to pay a $2.2 million HIPAA settlement fine, update its privacy policies and improve staff train- ing aer it allowed television crews to film patients without their consent. 6. St. Joseph Health (Irvine, Calif.): $2.14 million. St. Joseph Health agreed to pay $2.14 million to settle claims it vio- lated HIPAA aer not changing the default settings on its new server. n Why the Phrase 'Can I Ask You a Question?' Drives athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush Nuts By Erin Dietsche How do you respond when someone approaches you and says, "Can I ask you a question?" Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush is in this situation fre- quently. "This is the question I get asked most often, and it drives me nuts," he wrote in a recent LinkedIn post. Though he doesn't want to "dismiss people that hesitantly ask me this question," it frustrates him because "it vocalizes those messy, hierarchical power structures that [he], and the company at large, try so hard to nip right in the bud." Throughout his LinkedIn post, titled "Ask and Ye Shall Re- ceive," Mr. Bush stresses that the last thing he wants is for athenahealth employees to feel uncomfortable asking him questions. Instead, he proposes an "open, creative, colle- gial culture" and an "honest and welcoming" environment. Rather than being asked if asking a question is permissi- ble, Mr. Bush wants to hear more questions like "'How can I make this happen?'" and "'How can I achieve this goal?'" Additionally, Mr. Bush himself is working on asking more questions at athenahealth. "In a company prided on its employees being both teachers and learners, I want to commit more to this atmosphere in the new year and te- naciously contribute to and gain from all those who work around me," he wrote. n Houston Methodist CEO: Technology to Blame for Escalating Healthcare Costs By Brooke Murphy D uring an economics conference in Houston in De- cember, Houston Methodist CEO Marc Boom, MD, argued advances in technology are a major con- tributor to escalating U.S. healthcare spending, reports Houston Chronicle. "In most industries, technology is the answer to cheaper and cheaper," Dr. Boom said. "Oil and gas, obviously, is a perfect example of that. In healthcare, because of the way things are priced, oftentimes technology actually drives costs." Some advances in technology have produced superior health outcomes but at a great cost. Dr. Boom referenced how aortic valve replacement, which once required open- heart surgery, today is completed via a catheter inserted through a patient's groin. "Shouldn't that decrease costs?" Dr. Boom said. "For a vari- ety of reasons, the cost of the valve that goes in is actually higher-cost [sic] than what we were using before." Technology has also increased long-term healthcare spending by extending human life expectancy. "What's happened is that people don't die early of their heart attack, they don't die early of their cancer," Dr. Boom said. "And then they live into their 80s and their 90s, and they get chronic neurological diseases," which require sig- nificant resources to treat. n

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