Privacy and Healthcare Business Associates with Isabella Porter
On March 18, 2024, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued revised guidance on the use of tracking technologies by HIPAA-covered entities and business associates....more
Looking for compliance education and networking in your area? HCCA’s Regional Healthcare Compliance Conferences offer practitioners convenient, local compliance education on a wide variety of current and emerging topics...more
In June 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued new guidance on the use of remote communication technologies to deliver audio-only telemedicine in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability...more
In April, 2020, in an effort to facilitate a national pivot to telehealth in light of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE), the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a policy...more
The Biden Administration announced that the federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) will expire at the end of the day on May 11, 2023. As we draw closer to the expiration date of the PHE, do you feel fine about your...more
Websites using data tracking and collection software risk potentially serious consequences under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, commonly referred to as “HIPAA.” In a Bulletin issued December...more
On December 1, 2022, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a bulletin on the requirements imposed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) for online tracking technologies regarding...more
On December 1, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provided guidance on the intersection of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the use of...more
On December 1, 2022, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a bulletin warning that commonly used website technologies, including cookies, pixels, and session...more
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the evolution of the role of technology in medical care, giving rise to novel issues in the absence of formal governmental guidance. Responding to certain challenges brought on by the...more
Preparation for operations after the end of the Public Health Emergency (PHE) have commenced. HHS released guidance on using remote communication technologies for audio-only telehealth services in compliance with HIPAA. In...more
As COVID-19 antibodies begin flooding the immune systems of most Americans, it is important to remember the important role that hygiene has played over the past fifteen months. For many, the risks and dangers of the pandemic...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
2020 can rightfully be called the year for remote health care. Fueled by necessity and accompanying loosened regulations, telehealth and the demand for remote patient monitoring boomed. Signs that this progress is here to...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
On August 6, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the conviction of Massachusetts gynecologist Rita Luthra for criminal HIPAA violations and obstructing a health care investigation. Although such...more
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on April 2 that HHS is exercising its enforcement discretion to permit business associates to use and disclose protected health information (PHI) for public health...more
In an era of decreasing reimbursement and rapidly expanding opportunities associated with “big data”, healthcare entities may be looking for ways to monetize protected health information (“PHI”) for their own, non-patient...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