August HIPAA conference focuses on imaging

To soothe the anxiety being experienced by healthcare providers, a conference on compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act being held this summer in Dallas is specifically targeting the medical imaging community.

The one-day conference at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport Hilton is intended for healthcare imaging staff charged with the assessment, definition, implementation, and support of security and privacy requirements as required by the upcoming HIPAA implementation. This population includes:

?product and program managers
?security officers
?information systems personnel
?communication and software engineers
?system administrators

"This conference comes at a time when the people responsible for health information security must develop a HIPAA-compliant program that includes medical imaging," said conference organizer Herman Oosterwijk, president of OTech. "The penalties for noncompliance are very real."

Developing a HIPAA-compliant program doesn't have to be intimidating, according to Oosterwijk, who said the information and experience are there. He plans to tap that experience August 21 by assembling the people who need the information in the same room as the people who have the information.

Sessions scheduled at the training conference include:

?HIPAA in radiology
?security protocols
?clinical perspective
?legal impact and ramifications
?creating a comprehensive IS security program
?practical experiences and guidelines on how to implement a HIPAA compliant program, a case study

Attorney Kris K. Hughes, a Florida-based HIPAA legal expert, will discuss legal considerations associated with implementation and compliance, such as third-party contractual implications, risk assessment, state law preemption issues, standard of care concerns, and criminal and civil penalties for noncompliance. She will also present a general overview of the Final Privacy Regulation and the Proposed Security Regulation and review the status of outstanding regulations.

"The Privacy and Security standards promulgated under HIPAA make up a portion of the broad, federal regulatory response to the advances made in information technology and healthcare delivery," Hughes said. "Administrative simplification and information privacy and security are the ultimate goals. Reaching such objectives will necessitate at least an elementary understanding of the regulations and, ultimately, comprehensive guidance through the law's administrative, technical, and procedural requirements."

Other presenters in addition to Oosterwijk include:

?Rita Aikins, information security and privacy officer and HIPAA project manager for Providence Health System, Oregon Region
?Samuel J. Dwyer III, Ph.D., a professor of radiology at the University of Virginia
?Kirk Kirksey, CIO of the Baylor hospital system in Dallas
?Dr. Ward Terry, a radiologist at the VA hospital in Dallas
?Glen Marshall, project leader of a multi-SDO project for digital signatures under the coordination of the American National Standards Institute's Healthcare Informatics Standards Board

Further details are available at the OTech website
http://www.otechimg.com/ .