Attacks of Ransomware strucks South Dakota plastic surgery practice

Plastic Surgery of South Dakota is providing about 10,200 current and former patients a year of credit and identity protection services amid concerns that their information was accessed during a mid-February ransomware attack.

The agency removed the ransomware from its information systems and decrypted data, then brought in security experts to determine if any data was accessed by unauthorized users. While the majority of records were not accessed, the practice was unable to rule out whether a smaller subset of sufferer records had been breached.

To date, although, there is no proof of any actual or attempted misuse of data, the practice noted in a patient notification letter. Information that could have been compromised includes patients’ names, driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers, state identification numbers, credit and debit card information, medical conditions and diagnosis information, lab results, addresses, dates of birth and health insurance data.

Plastic Surgery of South Dakota is further recommending a range of steps for affected individuals to take to protect themselves, including monitoring credit reports and explanations of benefits; getting free credit reports from the three major credit bureaus; placing fraud alerts on credit files and placing a security freeze on credit reports, which prohibits release of information from the reports absent consumer authorization.

The practice refused to give further details about the incident beyond a patient notification letter.

 

Tabula Rasa HealthCare Initiates Part D Enhanced Medication Therapy Management Program To Make Better Medication Use

Tabula Rasa HealthCare, Inc., a healthcare technology company giving medication safety solutions for health plans and provider groups, victoriously launched, on the day of January 1, 2017, a pilot program to establish and deliver an Enhanced Medication Therapy Management (i.e., Enhanced MTM) program. The pilot involves 7 states included in Medicare Part D Region 25: Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The program deals the requirements of the Part D Enhanced MTM Model test proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), a division of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Tabula Rasa HealthCare has deployed its proprietary science and technology Medication Risk Mitigation products and services to conduct 360-degree reviews and safety assessments of complex medication regimens, giving an innovative, alternative approach to personalized pharmacotherapy. In this pilot, Tabula Rasa HealthCare has performed medication risk stratification of almost 240,000 members to recognize members at the highest risk for adverse drug events.  As a next step, TRHC is cooperating with members who recognize as high risk for an adverse drug event, and their prescribers, to more personalize their medication regimens thereby optimizing pharmacotherapy treatment.

“This EMTM compliance is a thrilling project – and new market – for us, as we’re tasked with optimizing medication use, hence decreasing medication-related hospitalizations, and making better coordination of care for tens of thousands of older Americans. This is the 1st application of our proprietary software outside of the Program for All-inclusive Care of the Elderly (PACE) market, and we consider we can drive similar improvements in outcomes as we do with our PACE partners, involving reductions in falls, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations,” claimed Calvin H. Knowlton, PhD, Chairman and CEO of Tabula Rasa HealthCare. “We consider TRHC’s approach to medication risk mitigation, which is deployed on the science of individual drug metabolism within a multi-drug regimen, fosters personalization of each medication regimen, which enables better member health outcomes and cost savings. Moreover, this is a great instance of the scalability and flexibility for our Medication Risk Mitigation Software Platform, MedWise Advisor®, as well as our personalized Medication Decision Support procedures.”