Dive Brief:
- The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has released a new tool to help small and medium-sized providers assess their information security risks.
- The security risk assessment tool is ONC's first mobile application. It will help health care organizations produce documentation that demonstrates they have considered security risks.
- The no-cost tool includes: 156 questions to guide health care organizations through the requirements, storage for answers, comments and risk remediation plans, and the ability to produce a report that can be submitted to auditors.
Dive Insight:
All you have to do is scan the news to see that even large organizations with big, sophisticated IT departments still have major security breaches from time to time. Smallish providers have it even worse: Many don't have an IT department in-house, so they are at a disadvantage when it comes to proving that they've met security requirements for HIPAA and other regulations. It's good to see ONC put a tool out there that can help close that gap.