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
Seyfarth Synopsis: With the myriad claims for religious accommodation that came out of mandatory COVID vaccination policies, employers have become familiar how to handle requests for religious accommodation in the workplace. ...more
Unleashed on June 27, 2017, NotPetya caused an estimated $10 billion in damages globally, among the costliest ransomware attacks in history. In 2018, the Trump administration—in tandem with the British government—blamed...more
Over the course of the past few months, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), both of which are divisions of the U.S. Department of Health and...more
Who will notify the potentially millions of individuals whose information might have been jeopardized by the massive cyberattack on Change Healthcare? Since the affiliate of UnitedHealth Group (UHG) first reported the...more
It is critical for employers and plan fiduciaries/administrators to stay informed of HIPAA privacy and security-related legal developments because most employer sponsored group health plans — regardless of the employer’s...more
The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to eliminate the federal constitutional right to abortion continues to alter the legal landscape across the country. On April 26, 2024, the...more
On May 6, 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published its final rule revamping the non-discrimination regulations issued under § 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. The revised rules apply to all...more
United Healthcare Group (UHG) CEO Andrew Witty was in a board meeting on Feb. 21 when officials interrupted with the news that Change Healthcare—a clearinghouse UHG subsidiary Optum had purchased for $1.3 billion in October...more
Kaiser Permanente is notifying 13.4 million current and former members that their personal information may have been compromised when it was transmitted to tech giants Google, Microsoft Bing and X (formerly Twitter) when...more
Turns out, ignorance really is bliss, at least according to the Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) within the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), in publishing its final rule on algorithmic discrimination by payers...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights (OCR) recently updated its controversial, year-old guidance document on the use of online tracking technologies by healthcare providers and other...more
The purpose of this quarterly tracker is to identify key federal and state health AI policy activity. Below reflects federal legislative and regulatory activity to date related to AI, and state legislative activity introduced...more
Principal Liz Heddleston was recently interviewed by HCPro for a story published on April 8, 2024, discussing the rising threat of ransomware attacks for healthcare providers. The story highlights lessons learned from a...more
Conscientious objection in health care is the refusal of a health care professional to provide or participate in the delivery of a legal, medically appropriate health care service to a patient because of personal beliefs. ...more
On February 8, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), released final rule (Final Rule)...more
House Passes Legislation to Prohibit Use of QALYs in All Federal Health Programs. The House passed H.R. 485, the Protecting Health Care for All Patients Act of 2023, a bill designed to prohibit the use of QALYs and similar...more
If the penultimate enforcement settlement of 2023 issued by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sounds familiar, that’s with good reason. And the last one of the year should ring some bells, too....more
With a couple of “firsts,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is signaling that it is cracking down on healthcare organizations that fail to identify and address cybersecurity...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS") issued a concept paper describing its overarching strategy to address healthcare cybersecurity. The concept paper builds on the Biden-Harris Administration's National...more
On November 6, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the most up-to-date, comprehensive, and practical general compliance guidance in decades. The new...more
Is your organization a business associate? You could be subject to enforcement action if you fail to protect health information within your control from ransomware attacks. In October, for the first time, the U.S....more
In 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed changes to the Privacy Rule under the Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act of 1996 (HIPAA) that would significantly alter the current...more
Report on Patient Privacy 23, no. 11 (November, 2023) Tim DiBona clearly remembers Christmas Eve 2018 when the staff of his small firm—Doctors’ Management Service (DMS)—arrived at their West Bridgewater, Mass., office to...more
Report on Patient Privacy 23, no. 11 (November, 2023) The American Hospital Association (AHA) is urging federal lawmakers to intervene with the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) so that hospitals and health systems can...more
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have recently launched a joint HIPAA Security Risk Assessment (SRA) Tool. The tool is designed to assist...more