February 8, 2021: Mari Savickis, Vice President, Public Policy at CHIME joins Bill for the news today to discuss the HIPAA security rule, information blocking, vaccination, cybersecurity and more. What is the talk on the Hill about vaccination? How are we doing so far with logistics? Will we hit Biden’s promise of 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days? The single biggest use case ever for patient identification is a pandemic. Why are some health systems able to set up efficient processes with their EMR while others struggle? Cybersecurity. It's a journey. Not a destination. There’s lots of problems along the road. And the health sector has been behind the eight ball. There's never going to be a time where you're completely inoculated from a cyber threat but the industry has been working damn hard these past few years trying to catch up.

Key Points:

• The H.R. 7898 bill recognizes cybersecurity practices established under the National Institute of Standards and Technology Act [00:17:40] 
• Cybersecurity is one of those things that is so challenging. You need a lot of funds to stay up to date and ahead of it. [00:18:28] 
• If you could picture cybersecurity like a door, are four double bolts enough or is it five? [00:24:18] 
• Tiberius is the Department of Health and Human Services’ vaccine allocation planning system. VTrckS is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine ordering portal. [00:29:40] 
• Information Blocking Resource Center
• Patient ID Now
• Trends in EMR Interoperability - CHIME / Klas Research 

Stories:

• Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Vacates MD Anderson HIPAA Penalty - National Law Review
• Pandemic Technology Project This is how America gets its vaccines - MIT Technology Review
• China's push to control Americans' health care future - CBS 60 Minutes