The Healthcare Waste Institute (HWI) developed this FAQ to provide information about the evolving Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak first identified in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. What is COVID-19? Coronavirus is a group of viruses named for the way they look under a microscope (“corona” meaning “crown”). The novel (or new) coronavirus, identified in 2019 during an investigation into an outbreak in Wuhan, China, causes the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The first case of […]

A security flaw in LabCorp’s website exposed thousands of medical documents, like test results containing sensitive health data. It’s the second incident in the past year after LabCorp said in June that 7.7 million patients had been affected by a credit card data breach of a third-party payments processor. That breach also hit several other laboratory testing companies, including Quest Diagnostics. This latest security lapse was caused by a vulnerability on a part of LabCorp’s […]

As the decade winds down, it’s hard to believe that the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules are almost twenty years old. It has been ten years since the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) published the first breach notification rule – the one based on the harm standard. And the Omnibus Rule’s “low probability of compromise” standard is almost seven years old! Regulators and regulated entities are heading […]

This post, Association between the Nurse Work Environment & its Outcomes studied by Penn Nursing, first appeared on https://biopharmapress.com. There is a critical part played by the nurses in the patient safety & are often considered the last stroke of defense against unsafe medical practices and errors. Plenty of researches have been conducted to find out the relationship between the working environment of nurses and various patient & nurse safety and quality results. But up […]

This post, EPA Issues New Waste Rules for Hospitals, Medical Clinics and Pharmacies, first appeared on https://www.lexology.com. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) recently issued new regulations for managing pharmaceutical waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”). The rules specify new requirements for hazardous waste management for healthcare facilities that generate pharmaceutical wastes. In issuing these rules, EPA aimed to achieve two objectives: reduce the presence of pharmaceutical compounds in wastewater and balance […]

This post, Target to Pay $7.4 Million for Improperly Disposing Hazardous Waste in Calif. Landfills – Again, first appeared on https://obrag.org. Good ol’ Target. As the giant mega-company was readying the former antique mall for its new Ocean Beach store, over on the environmental side, it was “disposing of batteries, light bulbs, medical waste and other environmentally hazardous materials improperly in landfills across the state” of California. And it got busted – and now it […]

This post, Drugs and syringes have become such a problem in Starbucks bathrooms that the company is installing needle-disposal boxes, first appeared on https://www.businessinsider.com. Starbucks is installing boxes for safe disposal of syringes in the bathrooms of certain locations, following workers’ reports of discarded needles and sometimes concerning conditions. The coffee giant is exploring remedies after employees expressed fears about being pricked by uncapped needles and experiencing related health risks. Starbucks is testing solutions, including installing […]

This post, OCR Fines Providers for HIPAA Violations, Failure to Follow “Basic Security Requirements”, first appeared on https://www.healthcare-informatics.com/. Florida-based Advanced Care Hospitalists PL (ACH) has agreed to pay $500,000 to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for a number of HIPAA compliance failures, including sharing protected health information with an unknown vendor without a business associate agreement. ACH provides contracted internal medicine physicians to hospitals and nursing […]