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August 2003 News ArchivesAugust 27, 2003 AHA to NCVHS: Urge CMS For More Transactions Guidance According to AHA News, the American Hospital Association (AHA) last week asked a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) panel to urge the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to respond quickly to critical issues not addressed in its recent guidance on complying with the transactions standards, which take effect October 16. George Arges, senior director of AHA's Health Data Management Group, told a subcommittee of HHS' National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) that CMS failed to establish in the guidance a real safety net for providers by adopting the recommendations regarding contingency plans to ensure that hospitals will continue to receive payments after October 16. Read
AHA's statement to NCVHS. Read
AHA's comments on key points of the Guidance (document file).
August 18, 2003 NIST Releases IT Security Metrics Guidance The final version of NIST Special Publication 800-55, "Security Metrics Guide for Information Technology (IT) Systems" is now available. The document provides guidance on how to establish a metrics program to facilitate decision making and improve performance and accountability through collection, analysis, and reporting of relevant performance-related IT security data. View
NIST's "Security Metrics Guide for IT Systems" Special
Publication 800-55 (PDF). August 18, 2003 ANSI Seeks Input on Healthcare IT Standards The American National Standards Institute's Healthcare Informatics Standards Board is conducting its first survey of the healthcare community on clinical data standards. "This short series of questions provides a voice for the healthcare information technology community to improve the standardization system under which it operates," said Sally Seitz, the board's secretary and program administrator for standards facilitation. The goal is to identify areas in which new or revised standards are needed, areas at risk of duplication or overlapping of standards, and new areas that may benefit from the organization's coordination efforts. The survey deadline is August 31. August 18, 2003 Hospitals Appear to be Coping with Power Outage Scattered reports gathered by the American Hospital Assocation's news service suggest that hospitals in the northeastern US and Canada were keeping their doors open Friday despite the region's power outage. Facilities turned on back-up power generators, canceled elective surgeries and put emergency procedures in place to meet the challenge. August 15, 2003 CMS Publishes Interim Final Rule for Electronic Submission of Medicare Claims Required Under ASCA Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published the Interim Final Rule, with comment period, for Electronic Submission of Medicare Claims. This rule implements the statutory requirement found in the Administrative Simplification Compliance Act (ASCA). ASCA requires (with a few exceptions) all claims sent to the Medicare Program be submitted electronically starting October 16, 2003. This Rule sets forth the details for implementation of the Medicare electronic claims submission requirement and who may be exempt from these requirements. The regulation requires that all claims submitted to Medicare on October 16, 2003 and beyond be done so electronically except for certain circumstances including:
August 14, 2003 Windows Worms Show Security Is in the Hands of the User Worms that take advantage of known Microsoft vulnerabilities have struck computers worldwide this month. W32.Mimail.A@mm is a worm that takes advantage of two vulnerabilities, the most serious of which would allow script to run in the Local Computer Zone, spreads by email, and steals information from a user's machine. The W32.Blaster Worm attempts to download the msblast.exe file to the %WinDir%\system32 directory and then execute it. The worm also attempts to perform a Denial of Service (DoS) on the Microsoft Windows Update Web server (windowsupdate.com). This is an attempt to prevent you from applying a patch on your computer against the DCOM RPC vulnerability. According to the Washington Post, the Blaster worm that spread across the globe Monday and Tuesday is a slap in the face to Microsoft's trusted computing initiative and a clear demonstration that a large portion of the responsibility for cybersecurity lies with individual users, not the companies that make software and computer systems. While the new worm appears to do little actual damage to infected computers, the Wall Street Journal reported, "the Blaster worm shows that even if Microsoft discovers flaws in its software, the company needs to better educate its customers on how to fix them."
August 11, 2003 CMS Announces Another HIPAA Roundtable The Twelfth National HIPAA Implementation Roundtable offered by HHS' Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services is scheduled for Friday, August 22 from 2:00 to 3:30 PM EDT. The call-in number is 1-877-381-6315 and the conference ID is 1596431. No registration is required. The transcript of the May and June Roundtables are now available; the transcript of the Roundtable held in March will be coming soon. Read the May Roundtable transcript (PDF). Read the June Roundtable transcript (PDF). August 8, 2003 TSA Revises Privacy Plan for Airline Passenger Screening Tool Federal Computer Week reports the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), recently announced that the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) II will maintain airline passenger data for "a certain number of days" rather than the 50 years cited earlier. The revisions are part of an effort by DHS officials to alleviate privacy concerns. TSA officials also specified that CAPPS II would not use bank records, credit ratings or medical records to determine passengers' identities or terrorist risk. August 6, 2003 Mimail Worm Masquerades as Note From IT Staff A new Windows mass-mailing virus, which disguises itself as a file sent by a computer user's network administrator, began infecting systems on Friday and quickly rose to the top of the virus charts on Monday, reports ZDNet. The worm, attempts to exploit a vulnerability in Internet Explorer that allows a script to be executed by an infected computer. The worm then tries to use that script to mass e-mail itself, potentially clogging mail servers or slowing down networks, according to antivirus company Symantec. August 1, 2003 Delaware Certified for HIPAA Compliance; New Mexico's Efforts Lagging IHealthBeat reports Delaware is more than a year ahead on its HIPAA compliance while most states are scrambling to meet the upcoming Oct. 16 compliance deadline for the transactions and code sets rule. It may be the first state to be "officially noted" as HIPAA compliant by CMS, according to Federal Computer Week. Meanwhile, iHealthBeat reported earlier this week New Mexico's state government is in danger of missing the Oct. 16 HIPAA transactions and code sets (TCS) deadline, which could delay at least $200 million in payments to health care providers each month, New Mexico Business Weekly reports. State officials say they will meet the deadline for submitting standardized electronic health care forms, but critics are unsure and complain that no one knows how much the state has spent on compliance efforts. Read more about Delaware's HIPAA Compliance. Read more about New Mexico's HIPAA Efforts.
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