Digital Planning Podcast - Interview With Leeza Garber
Compliance into the Weeds-Episode 39, Disclosure of Ransomware Attacks
Your Cyber Minute: Compliance with the Proposed NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation
Safeguards against Data Security Breaches (Part One)
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, many individuals and organizations have expressed uncertainty about the protection afforded to data stored on health apps,...more
New Jersey Acting AG Andrew Bruck reached a settlement with healthcare provider Diamond Institute for Infertility and Menopause, LLC (“Diamond”) to resolve allegations stemming from a 2016 data breach that compromised the...more
On February 24, 2021, the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“OCR”) announced that it will not impose penalties against covered entities or their business associates that use online...more
On January 19, 2021, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a Notice of Enforcement Discretion (Notice) announcing that it will not impose penalties for...more
In this week’s episode, Rebecca Schaefer and Hannah Maroney discuss a string of recent HIPAA enforcement actions which demonstrate that the HHS Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the agency tasked with enforcing HIPAA, is...more
Report on Medicare Compliance 29, no. 28 (August 3, 2020) - The 2017 theft of an unencrypted laptop is at the heart of a new HIPAA settlement with Lifespan Health System Affiliated Covered Entity (Lifespan ACE) in Rhode...more
On July 27, 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it reached a settlement with a Rhode Island nonprofit health system related to the theft of an unencrypted laptop containing its...more
Report on Patient Privacy 20, no. 1 (January 2020) - In the waning days of 2019, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) didn’t halt the HIPAA enforcement momentum it had built up during the last quarter of the year, dinging...more
Report on Research Compliance 17, no. 1 (January 2020) - Ah, those pesky residents. If you’re a teaching hospital, you can’t live without them, right? But sometimes living with them is mighty costly, as the University of...more
SDNY Rejects Standing under “Increased Risk” Theory Where Data Not Targeted or Stolen - The Southern District of New York rejected a settlement that would have resolved a class action based on the unauthorized (and...more
On November 5, 2019, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a $3 million settlement with the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) to settle potential...more
A large New York hospital system learned this lesson the expensive way. According to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) press release issued earlier this week, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigated...more
In one of this year’s largest HIPAA settlements, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is set to collect $3 million from the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC). This...more
Twelve state attorneys general have brought suit against two medical Information Technology companies. The AGs allege that the companies, Medical Informatics Engineering Inc. and its subsidiary, NoMoreClipboard LLC, had poor...more
A single, multidisciplinary entity, like a university, may include certain departments that use PHI, and other departments that do not. Such institutions are eligible to (and should) self-identify as “hybrid entities” to...more
Healthcare organizations take note: not following your own data security rules can be costly, very costly. And the more time it takes to comply, the faster the fines stack up....more
Conducting HIPAA Breach Risk Assessments - The HIPAA rules relating to assessment of potential patient confidentiality breaches were changed in 2013. Specifically, on January 17, 2013, the Office of Civil Rights released...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released its October Cybersecurity Newsletter last week with a focus on mobile devices. Given the amount of work conducted on mobile devices...more
Consumers are increasingly turning to health apps for a variety of medical and wellness-related purposes. This has in turn caused greater amounts of data—including highly sensitive information—to flow through these apps....more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced yet another HIPAA privacy and security settlement involving Protected Health Information (PHI) on a stolen laptop. Although this might be seen as just...more
Last week, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued guidance on securing end-to-end communications for sensitive information transmitted between parties over the internet. The OCR warns against “man-in-the-middle” (MITM)...more
The use of cloud service providers has exploded in the past several years. According to estimates from Gartner, the market for cloud services is expected to reach $204 billion in 2016. But the use of cloud service providers...more
Cloud service providers that process electronic protected health information (ePHI) are business associates under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), even if the PHI is encrypted and the...more
On October 6, 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) issued guidance on complying with HIPAA privacy, security, and breach notification rules when using cloud computing technology...more
Likely because most victims comply with their demands, the incidence of attacks by ransomware hackers has exploded in 2016. Guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) in July notes that, on...more