We can rightfully assume that everybody who uses a computer or mobile device to connect to the Internet, whether for personal or professional reasons, is aware of the impact of hackers and malware on our online experience. Even if we have not personally been hacked, we are only too aware of the defenses we have to put in place to protect our identities, our information, and our equipment. Anti-Malware software on our devices, spam filters for our email, firewalls to protect our networks, etc. We need to pay for them, maintain them, and we need them to allow us to do what we need to, or enjoy doing – interacting with social media, web surfing, communicating, shopping, studying, and more.

Yet, the U.S. government just told us there is another thing to worry about. Those of us who use implanted electronic medical devices, like pacemakers, neuro-stimulators, or insulin pumps, were just told that these devices, just like our computers or smartphones, may be at risk of being...

To:  HIMSS Emerging Professionals,

Registration is open for the September 14th Emerging Professionals webinar:

Meaningful Mentoring or Mentoring for Fun & Profit (Everybody’s)*

David S. Finn, CISA, CISM, CRISC, Health IT Officer, Symantec

A seriously light-hearted look at what being a mentor is all about.  We’ll learn how mentoring got started, what it means to be one and that there can be different mentors for different needs.

• Learn and understand what a mentor is:  historically, by definition and in application
• Recognize there may be different mentors for different needs and how to go about finding one
• Be familiar with different kinds of mentors, personal & professional

Friday, September 14th

12:00 – 1:00 PM Central

...

Today's healthcare organizations face many challenges as they meet the broad range of changes and regulations that apply to healthcare stakeholders. This list includes expanding connectivity and information exchange, automating electronic medical record systems, delivering quality around-the-clock patient care, as well as securing Protected Health Information (ePHI). To meet these challenges, healthcare organizations depend on the ability to deploy agile and efficient IT infrastructure. Mission-critical applications must serve the vital and specific needs of patient care, while timely adoption of new technologies such as virtualization and cloud become more important to protecting the bottom line. With tightening IT budgets and more government mandates on Healthcare IT, many organizations face challenging and difficult choices for deploying their mission-critical applications. A completely consolidated single-vendor hardware and software stack can offer comfort for some, at the...

   The Supreme Court has spoken, but the debate will probably not end. This morning, the Supreme Court held that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is constitutional. Healthcare will, however, be a key issue in the presidential election.

   Some of you may remember the discussion of this case on a recent Healthcare Community Call.  There were 4 key issues the Court was to consider:

1. Anti-Injunction Act
2. The Individual Mandate
3. Severability
4. Medicaid Expansion

  In a nutshell, the Individual Mandate was upheld.  Not under the commerce clause as the Administration argued, but upheld constitutionally under the broad taxing powers of the Congress.  That, then, essentially addresses the anti-injunction act by saying it is a tax and not a penalty.

Severability is not an issue since the law was upheld.  There is no need to pull out or sever pieces of the law from...