Overall, $17.6 billion in improper payments were prevented in 2011, as part of President Barack Obama Administrations Campaign to Cut Waste, fueled by decreases in payment errors in Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps. Combined with the improper payment cuts in 2010, agencies have avoided making more than $20 billion in improper payments in the two years since Obama issued an executive order initiating an aggressive campaign against wasteful payment errors, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is launching a new antibiotic tracking system allowing hospitals to monitor antibiotic use electronically, make better decisions about how to improve use and compare themselves to other hospitals. Before now, CDC was only able to track antibiotic use in physician practices.

To establish greater public trust in health IT and health information exchanges (HIEs) and facilitate adoption of these technologies, a comprehensive privacy and security framework must be in place, Deven McGraw, director of the Health Privacy Project at Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), stated before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law.

The secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should publish a plan within 12 months to minimize patient safety risks associated with health IT and report annually on the progress being made, according to a new report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

This month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will commence performing HIPAA audits for a new pilot that will use the audit program to assess HIPAA compliance efforts by a range of covered entities.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has thrown the hammer down in his vendetta against the Health Research and Services Administration (HRSA) in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concerning HRSAs decision to shut down public access to the National Practitioner Data Banks Public Use File.

Lifespan, a five-hospital system based in Providence, R.I., reported to the R.I. Department of Health its discovery and correction of an issue with software used to generate medication instructions provided to discharged patients from Rhode Island Hospital/Hasbro Childrens Hospital, Miriam Hospital, Bradley Hospital and Newport Hospital.

During a home invasion, an external computer hard drive that contained some personal information on 16,288 University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Health System patients was stolen.