On June 28th, 2012, the Supreme Court decided to pursue with the 2010 health care overhaul bill. The decision resulted in a 5 to 4 split decision with the majority favoring the passing of the bill. The bill itself requires almost every person to have health insurance. By this bill passing, more people will be in the hospital while having the insurance companies covering the cost.
President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March 2010. The act has sparked much controversy because of its nature, which essentially is to protect and serve consumers from being bullied by corporate giants. For instance, any child under the age of 19 years of age with preexisting health conditions would now be eligible to get insurance. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would be authorized to approve of more generic drugs. By doing so, more consumers would be able to take advantage of the lower cost attributed to the cost of generic drugs.
As soon as the act was officially on its way, the stocks of hospitals have made an improvement. One of the hospital institutions has had their stock rise by an about 14000% increase. The reason for this increase is because of the mandates that are soon to come. In 2014, the mandates will be in full effect and every American would have to carry insurance or face a penalty, which is 1% of the person's income or $95 a year (whichever is greater).
With the huge influx of patients, there will come a profuse amount of patient confidential information. Consequently, the need for data privacy and protection will need to be increased as well. An effective method for the healthcare industry would be to carry out a 2 factor authentication security system while using 1 time passwords in a more secure network such as an out-of-band method. This type of data security is a more cost-effective way to manage the change to come.
An example where this is a more financially beneficial to hospital institutions is this, nurses or other healthcare professionals that are accessing patient information can use 2 factor authentication to safeguard themselves from hackers. The 2 factors that can be used in a cost-effective manner that will consist of a personal login and password along side with a one time password (OTP) delivered to a health professionals' mobile device. With all the data breaches occurring on all different industries, the hospital institutions will need to ensure the safety of their patients' confidential information. Health records should not be taken lightly and should be highly regulated and enforced.
