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)
Throughout 2022, we continue to see regulators placing an emphasis on the importance of protecting and securing information, in particular consumer personal information, at both the federal and state levels. ...more
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
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 14, the Fifth Circuit vacated the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center’s (M.D. Anderson) $4.3 million fine for HIPAA violations arising from its loss of more than 35,000 individuals’ protected health...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
After a long quiet period, the second HIPAA settlement to be announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in an orchestrated one-two punch was far more costly to the second violator. Lifespan Health...more
As many businesses and organizations adapt to the impact of COVID-19 on their operations, the systems and data security risks they face continue to increase and must be an area of focus in all planning for COVID-19. While...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
The University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) entered into a $3 million no-fault settlement agreement and two year corrective...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
This week, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced a $3,000,000 HIPAA settlement arising from a medical center’s loss of an unencrypted laptop and flash drive. This is simply the latest of many HIPAA settlements based...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
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
On April 8, 2019, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDA) filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit seeking review of a decision by the Department of Health & Human Services’s (HHS)...more
As we approach 2019, companies will want to keep in mind the changes that are coming to various US states’ breach notice laws. On January 1, 2019 Iowa’s law, which has already been amended twice since it was passed in 2008,...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
On June 18, 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced that an HHS Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) granted summary judgment to OCR in an enforcement action...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
CMS issued a memo to state survey agency directors on December 28, 2017, to clarify CMS’s position on texting patient information. The memo, which indicates that it is effective “immediately,” states that CMS prohibits...more