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Professional Issues Supporting Your Practice

CDA Oasis Conversations: Strengthening your IT System and Complying with Privacy Laws

In a series of video interviews, Anne Genge, CEO and Co-founder of Healthcare Compliance Network Inc., speaks with Dr. John O’Keefe about the importance of spotting and dealing with computer systems vulnerabilities that may occur in the dental office. This is the first video in the series.

Anne genge Edited picAnne Genge is a Certified Information Privacy Professional with the International Association of Privacy Professionals. She also holds certifications for HIPAA, Credit Card Security, Internet, and Network Security. With over 20 years of experience, Anne knows the challenges healthcare providers face with technology. She and her team at HCN work with dental and medical professionals daily to minimize data risk and maximize patient care.

Interview Highlights

Dentistry, although an important aspect of healthcare, has been left to fend for itself with respect to understanding and adhering to privacy laws for the protection of patient information. Practitioners must abide federally by PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act), provincial regulations as well as the provincial college’s electronic document regulations.

The guidelines are the “rule book” dentists must follow for the following reasons:

  • Patient data = business data
  • Patients’ trust and confidence that we are protecting ALL their information is crucial
  • Practice’s reputation and credibility is at stake
  • Risks of external breaches of security must be considered and protected against

Surprisingly, the majority of data breaches take place in the healthcare industry and the dental practice environment serves as a “perfect storm” since most dental practitioners operate in silos or isolation from larger healthcare institutions. Staff is not always well-trained with respect to privacy, and security solutions can be expensive.

Watch the video

 

2 Comments

  1. Ahmad September 21, 2015

    In order to be proactive on the subject of privacy and security of the patients’ data…who or where should we look for these guidelines? and how can we test our existing systems and staff if they are concurrent on the latest update?

    Thanks

    Reply
    1. Anne Genge September 23, 2015

      Ahmad,
      Thank you for your question. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s website has information which will direct you to the guidelines applicable to your province. https://www.priv.gc.ca/resource/fs-fi/02_05_d_15_e.asp
      To assess the current state of your systems you can get an IT Security Assessment. Healthcare Compliance Network http://www.healthcarecompliance.ca specializes in this for dental practices. I also welcome you and others to contact me directly agenge@healthcarecompliance.ca.

      Reply

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