HHS Office for Civil Rights Director Melanie Fontes Rainer on Progress and News at OCR
ERISA Blog | Changes to the HIPAA Privacy Rules A Primer for Self-Insured Group Health Plans
Podcast - Data Privacy and Tracking Technology Compliance
Patient Data and Privacy
2022 DSIR Deeper Dive: OCR’s Right of Access Initiative
HIPAA Tips With Williams Mullen - Telehealth After the Pandemic
Relaxed HIPAA Restrictions For Providers Using Telehealth
Webinar: Investigating and Resolving Sexual Assaults on Campus
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has, as part of its mandate, the responsibility to enforce the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule....more
Ideal for professionals with some compliance knowledge and experience, HCCA’s Healthcare Privacy Compliance Academy offers practitioners a deeper understanding of effective compliance management in a healthcare setting. The...more
Given the choice between credit card data and digital health records, cybercriminals prefer the latter. A stolen credit card can be canceled. Electronic protected health information (ePHI) with its treasure-trove of...more
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it has entered into a settlement with a business associate that provides electronic medical records services to health...more
Organizations that meet the definition of "covered entity" under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and its implementing regulations (HIPAA) must be diligent to maintain the privacy and security...more
Throughout 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has announced seven settlement agreements and one civil monetary penalty to resolve allegations of Health Insurance Portability and...more
October 2018 marks the 15th annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month. In honor of this occasion, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR)...more
It was a busy April for the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) (see our prior post on a settlement from earlier in April). On April 20, OCR announced a Resolution Agreement with Center for Children’s Digestive Health, S.C....more
On April 24, 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”), announced its first settlement with a wireless health services provider, CardioNet, Inc., for alleged violations of the Health...more
Between June and November 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (HHS OCR) has announced seven high-dollar settlements to resolve alleged violations of the HIPAA privacy, security, and breach...more
In a recent newsletter, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) encourages health care organizations to review their procedures around authentication and “ensure that they have the appropriate safeguards in place.”...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
Capping off a busy month of HIPAA settlements, on August 4, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced a $5.55 million settlement with Advocate Health Care Network (“Advocate”), the largest fully-integrated healthcare...more
Advocate Health Care Network, which operates 12 hospitals and more than 200 other treatment centers in Chicago and central Illinois, has agreed to the largest settlement to date with the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) for...more
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) recently updated the audit protocol that it will be using to assess Covered Entities’ and Business Associate’s compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)...more
On March 21, 2016, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced that it has begun its phase 2 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) audit program. In...more
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) recently announced that it has initiated Phase 2 of its audit program to assess Covered Entities’ and Business Associate’s...more
For our HIPAA-covered entity readers, we have asked these questions before: Have you taken a business associate inventory? Have you undertaken a comprehensive risk assessment as required by HIPAA?...more
As we have repeatedly emphasized on this blog, HIPAA Covered Entities must ensure that they have compliant business associate agreements (“BAAs”) in place with all of their business associates and must ensure that they have...more
Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (HHS OCR) have recently selected a vendor to conduct the second wave of HIPAA audits. These so-called “Phase 2 Audits” are set to commence...more
The Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) has selected Ashburn, Virginia-based FCi Federal to conduct the next round of HIPAA audits mandated by the HITECH Act. OCR views the audits as a compliance tool that will hopefully get out...more
During 2014, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services initiated six enforcement actions in response to security breaches reported by entities covered by the Health Insurance...more
The title of this alert, which comes straight from the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights' (OCR) announcement of its most recent settlement, again underscores the critical need for covered...more
As we have reported in this blog, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently released final regulations containing modifications to the HIPAA Privacy, Security, Enforcement, and...more