[Federal Register Volume 79, Number 8 (Monday, January 13, 2014)]
[Notices]
[Pages 2175-2177]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2014-00373]
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FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION
[File No. 122 3077]
Accretive Health, Inc.; Analysis of Proposed Consent Order To Aid
Public Comment
AGENCY: Federal Trade Commission.
ACTION: Proposed Consent Agreement.
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SUMMARY: The consent agreement in this matter settles alleged
violations of federal law prohibiting unfair or deceptive acts or
practices or unfair methods of competition. The attached Analysis of
Proposed Consent Order to Aid Public Comment describes both the
allegations in the draft complaint and the terms of the consent order--
embodied in the consent agreement--that would settle these allegations.
DATES: Comments must be received on or before January 30, 2014.
ADDRESSES: Interested parties may file a comment at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/accretiveconsent online or on paper, by
following the instructions in the Request for Comment part of the
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below. Write ``Accretive Health,
Inc.-Consent Agreement; File No. 122 3077'' on your comment and file
your comment online at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/accretiveconsenthttps://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/fidelitynationalconsent by following the instructions on the web-based
form. If you prefer to file your comment on paper, mail or deliver your
comment to the following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office of
the Secretary, Room H-113 (Annex D), 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.,
Washington, DC 20580.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: David Lincicum, Bureau of Consumer
Protection, (202-326-2773), 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Washington, DC
20580.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Pursuant to Section 6(f) of the Federal
Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 2.34, 16 CFR 2.34,
notice is hereby given that the above-captioned consent agreement
containing a consent order to cease and desist, having been filed with
and accepted, subject to final approval, by the Commission, has been
placed on the public record for a period of thirty (30) days. The
following Analysis to Aid Public Comment describes the terms of the
consent agreement, and the allegations in the complaint. An electronic
copy of the full text of the consent agreement package can be obtained
from the FTC Home Page (for December 31, 2013), on the World Wide Web,
at http://www.ftc.gov/os/actions.shtm. A paper copy can be obtained
from the FTC Public Reference Room, Room 130-H, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue
NW., Washington, DC 20580, either in person or by calling (202) 326-
2222.
You can file a comment online or on paper. For the Commission to
consider your comment, we must receive it on or before January 30,
2014. Write ``Accretive Health, Inc.- Consent
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Agreement; File No. 122 3077'' on your comment. Your comment--including
your name and your state--will be placed on the public record of this
proceeding, including, to the extent practicable, on the public
Commission Web site, at http://www.ftc.gov/os/publiccomments.shtm. As a
matter of discretion, the Commission tries to remove individuals' home
contact information from comments before placing them on the Commission
Web site.
Because your comment will be made public, you are solely
responsible for making sure that your comment does not include any
sensitive personal information, like anyone's Social Security number,
date of birth, driver's license number or other state identification
number or foreign country equivalent, passport number, financial
account number, or credit or debit card number. You are also solely
responsible for making sure that your comment does not include any
sensitive health information, like medical records or other
individually identifiable health information. In addition, do not
include any ``[t]rade secret or any commercial or financial information
which . . . is privileged or confidential,'' as discussed in Section
6(f) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 4.10(a)(2), 16 CFR
4.10(a)(2). In particular, do not include competitively sensitive
information such as costs, sales statistics, inventories, formulas,
patterns, devices, manufacturing processes, or customer names.
If you want the Commission to give your comment confidential
treatment, you must file it in paper form, with a request for
confidential treatment, and you have to follow the procedure explained
in FTC Rule 4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c).\1\ Your comment will be kept
confidential only if the FTC General Counsel, in his or her sole
discretion, grants your request in accordance with the law and the
public interest.
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\1\ In particular, the written request for confidential
treatment that accompanies the comment must include the factual and
legal basis for the request, and must identify the specific portions
of the comment to be withheld from the public record. See FTC Rule
4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c).
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Postal mail addressed to the Commission is subject to delay due to
heightened security screening. As a result, we encourage you to submit
your comments online. To make sure that the Commission considers your
online comment, you must file it at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/accretiveconsent by following the instructions on the web-based
form. If this Notice appears at http://www.regulations.gov/#!home, you
also may file a comment through that Web site.
If you file your comment on paper, write ``Accretive Health, Inc.-
Consent Agreement; File No. 122 3077'' on your comment and on the
envelope, and mail or deliver it to the following address: Federal
Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, Room H-113 (Annex D), 600
Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20580. If possible, submit your
paper comment to the Commission by courier or overnight service.
Visit the Commission Web site at http://www.ftc.gov to read this
Notice and the news release describing it. The FTC Act and other laws
that the Commission administers permit the collection of public
comments to consider and use in this proceeding as appropriate. The
Commission will consider all timely and responsive public comments that
it receives on or before January 30, 2014. You can find more
information, including routine uses permitted by the Privacy Act, in
the Commission's privacy policy, at http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/privacy.htm.
Analysis of Proposed Consent Order To Aid Public Comment
The Federal Trade Commission has accepted, subject to final
approval, a consent order applicable to Accretive Health Systems, Inc.
The proposed consent order has been placed on the public record for
thirty (30) days for receipt of comments by interested persons.
Comments received during this period will become part of the public
record. After thirty (30) days, the Commission will again review the
agreement and the comments received, and will decide whether it should
withdraw from the agreement and take appropriate action or make final
the agreement's proposed order.
Accretive Health enters into service agreements with hospital
systems around the country to provide services related to the hospital
systems' ``revenue cycle'' operations. Revenue cycle operations include
registration, transcription, coding and medical documentation, billing,
pricing, and collection of past due accounts. In exchange for these
services, hospital systems pay Accretive Health both fixed fees and
incentive payments based on a percentage of the monetary benefit from
increased revenues. Accretive Health employees work at hospital
facilities to assist with these services. As part of its service to
client hospitals, Accretive Health collects, maintains, and has access
to information about hospitals' patients, including sensitive health
and personal information. This information may include patient names,
dates of birth, billing information, diagnostic information, and Social
Security numbers.
The Commission's complaint alleges that Accretive Health unfairly
failed to provide reasonable and appropriate security for consumers'
personal information it collected and maintained by engaging in a
number of practices that, taken together, unreasonably and
unnecessarily exposed consumers' personal data to unauthorized access.
Among other things, Accretive Health created unnecessary risks of
unauthorized access or theft of personal information by:
a. Transporting laptops containing personal information in a manner
that made them vulnerable to theft or other misappropriation;
b. Failing to adequately restrict access to, or copying of,
personal information based on an employee's need for information;
c. Failing to ensure that employees removed information from their
computers for which they no longer had a business need; and
d. Using consumers' personal information in training sessions with
employees and failing to ensure that the information was removed from
employees' computers following the training.
The complaint further alleges that these failures contributed to a
July 2011 incident in Minneapolis, Minnesota in which an Accretive
Health laptop containing over 600 files with over 20 million pieces of
information related to 23,000 patients was left in the locked passenger
compartment of the employee's car and stolen. The laptop included
sensitive health and personal information, including patient names,
dates of birth, billing information, diagnostic information, and Social
Security numbers. The user of this laptop had data that was not
necessary to perform his job.
The proposed order contains provisions designed to prevent
Accretive Health from engaging in the future in practices similar to
those alleged in the complaint.
Part II of the proposed order requires Accretive Health to
establish and maintain, or continue to maintain, a comprehensive
information security program that is reasonably designed to protect the
security, confidentiality, and integrity of personal information
collected from or about consumers. The security program must contain
administrative, technical, and physical safeguards appropriate to
Accretive Health's size and complexity, nature and scope of its
activities, and the sensitivity of the information collected
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from or about consumers. Specifically, the proposed order requires
Accretive Health to:
Designate an employee or employees to coordinate and be
accountable for the information security program;
identify material internal and external risks to the
security, confidentiality, and integrity of personal information that
could result in the unauthorized disclosure, misuse, loss, alteration,
destruction, or other compromise of such information, and assess the
sufficiency of any safeguards in place to control these risks;
design and implement reasonable safeguards to control the
risks identified through risk assessment, and regularly test or monitor
the effectiveness of the safeguards' key controls, systems, and
procedures;
develop and use reasonable steps to select and retain
service providers capable of appropriately safeguarding personal
information they receive from Accretive Health, and require service
providers by contract to implement and maintain appropriate safeguards;
and
evaluate and adjust its information security program in
light of the results of testing and monitoring, any material changes to
operations or business arrangement, or any other circumstances that it
knows or has reason to know may have a material impact on its
information security program.
Part III of the proposed order requires Accretive Health to obtain
within the first one hundred eighty (180) days after service of the
order, and on a biennial basis thereafter for a period of twenty (20)
years, an assessment and report from a qualified, objective,
independent third-party professional, certifying, among other things,
that: (1) It has in place a security program that provides protections
that meet or exceed the protections required by Part II of the proposed
order; and (2) its security program is operating with sufficient
effectiveness to provide reasonable assurance that the security,
confidentiality, and integrity of sensitive consumer, information has
been protected.
Parts IV through VIII of the proposed order are reporting and
compliance provisions. Part IV requires Accretive Health to retain
documents relating to its compliance with the order. For most records,
the order requires that the documents be retained for a five-year
period. For the third-party assessments and supporting documents,
Accretive Health must retain the documents for a period of three years
after the date that each assessment is prepared. Part V requires
dissemination of the order now and in the future to all current and
future principals, officers, directors, and managers, and to persons
with responsibilities relating to the subject matter of the order. Part
VI ensures notification to the FTC of changes in corporate status. Part
VII mandates that Accretive Health submit a compliance report to the
FTC within 60 days, and periodically thereafter as requested. Part VIII
is a provision ``sunsetting'' the order after twenty (20) years, with
certain exceptions.
The purpose of this analysis is to facilitate public comment on the
proposed order. It is not intended to constitute an official
interpretation of the proposed complaint or order or to modify the
order's terms in any way.
By direction of the Commission.
Janice Podoll Frankle,
Acting Secretary.
[FR Doc. 2014-00373 Filed 1-10-14; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6750-01-P