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
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently published an executive summary (Report) outlining key enforcement activities of the Health Insurance Portability and...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
Nearly two months after settlement was reached, the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (HHS OCR) announced on Feb. 6 that it obtained a resolution agreement with Montefiore Medical Center over...more
2023 marked 20 years since the first compliance deadline under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s (“HIPAA”) privacy rule. Despite the two decades of experience with HIPAA, compliance continues to remain...more
October has been a busy month for the OCR, which is tasked with enforcing the regulations issued under HIPAA. In the past week, the OCR released two new guidance documents aimed at reducing the privacy and security risks...more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently offered covered entities and business associates (Regulated Entities) not-so-subtle reminders in its October 2023 Cybersecurity Newsletter that effective sanction policies can...more
On December 1, 2022, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued new guidance to covered entities and business associates regarding website and application user data tracking and how...more
Covered Entities and Business Associates must comply with HIPAA in their use of online tracking technologies, including cookies, pixels or similar code. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil...more
It’s no secret that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) exists to protect the privacy of patients and their sensitive health information. However, understanding the importance of HIPAA...more
Report on Patient Privacy 21, no. 3 (March 2021) - Sometime during the fall, a worker for a subcontractor of Humana Inc. decided to share actual member information from medical records via a Google document with people he...more
The Compliance Institute is celebrating 25 years! Join us for the Compliance Institute's 25th anniversary, April 19-22, 2021. This year, HCCA is excited to celebrate over two decades of compliance excellence with our...more
Report on Patient Privacy 20, no. 10 (October 2020) - September was quite the month for enforcement actions by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The agency announced eight settlements totaling more than $10 million....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
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
Irrespective of your industry, the current COVID-19 pandemic poses a new and unique challenge to organizations, their employees, and their customers. The emergence of COVID-19 has prompted organizations to collect and process...more
Report on Patient Privacy 20, no. 3 (March 2020) - A gastroenterologist in Utah who felt he was being held captive by an electronic health record (EHR) vendor found his 2013 complaint to the HHS Office for Civil Rights...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 Patient Privacy 19, no. 12 (December 2019) - Sentara Hospitals, a nonprofit group of 12 medical centers in Virginia and North Carolina, will implement a fairly minimal two-year corrective action plan (CAP) and...more
Last week the Health Care Compliance Association hosted its annual “Compliance Institute.” Iliana Peters, HHS Office for Civil Rights’ Senior Advisor for HIPAA Compliance and Enforcement, provided a thorough update of HIPAA...more
The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) must improve its oversight and enforcement of patient information privacy and security rules by “covered entities” and their business associates under the Health Information Portability...more
Everyone in healthcare knows that the next round of HIPAA audits is coming. Covered entities and business associates have long been advised to review and update their HIPAA security risk analyses, have business associate...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
Health care providers, health plans, business associates, and other entities affected by the federal HIPAA privacy and security regulations are quickly running out of excuses for not having a robust HIPAA compliance program...more
Changes to the HIPAA Enforcement Rule - Background: On October 30, 2009, HHS issued an interim final rule revising the Enforcement Rule to incorporate provisions of the HITECH Act. The NPRM then proposed a number of...more