Healthcare Document Retention
Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Video Podcast | Episode 190: Healthcare Tech and Human Resources with Shannon Frazier, HR Executive Director at Lenovo
The Chartwell Chronicles: Occupational Exposure Claims
Proof in Trial: Appellate Edition: Integra Med Analytics LLC et al. v. Providence Health & Services et al.
Hospice Audit Series | Painting the Picture: How to Advocate for Clinical Hospice Eligibility in the Audit Appeal Process
2022 Resolutions: What Healthcare Practices Need To Tackle In the New Year
Podcast: Are Vaccine Passports the Key to Reopening? - Diagnosing Health Care
Compliance Perspective: What's New in Healthcare Privacy
Workers' Compensation Academy: The Smoking Gun: Importance of Investigation in Insurance & Workers’ Compensation
From NC State to Changing the State of Health Information Networks, with Medicom Technologies’ Malcolm Benitz
Protecting Patient Medical Records
Exploring Digitization of Health and Medical Data and Records Part Two
Patient Records Requests: What You Need to Know
Technology in Healthcare
In 2019, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced its Right of Access Initiative, promising to prioritize patients’ rights to receive timely copies of their medical...more
Report on Patient Privacy 22, no. 8 (August, 2022) - The Department of Justice (DOJ) seized around $500,000 in Bitcoin ransom paid by two health care organizations in Kansas and Colorado to North Korean ransomware actors...more
In recent weeks, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) has announced 12 resolution agreements settling alleged violations of the HIPAA rules. Covered entities and business...more
Making quite the statement on July 15, 2022, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced in a press release that it had recently settled an additional 11 cases under its Right to Access Initiative. These settlements bring the...more
OCR Cracks Down on Healthcare Providers in Right to Access Initiative - “For too long, healthcare providers have slow-walked their duty to provide patients their medical records out of a sleepy bureaucratic inertia. We...more
Last month we had an incredibly insightful Fast Break analyzing a significant HIPAA enforcement victory for The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MD Anderson) in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. ...more
Continuing its serious march against covered entities not allowing patients access to their records, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has settled two more cases in two days in its Right of Access Initiative. This brings the...more
Elizabeth Barry Heddleston Associate Now is a great time for healthcare providers to assess their compliance with HIPAA’s right of access requirements. Not only is this a hot area of enforcement, patients’ rights to access...more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently announced another settlement involving investigations under its Right of Access Initiative. This settlement, the sixteenth such agreement under the Initiative (and one of the most...more
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) continues to take seriously all allegations of violations of the HIPAA right of access to patient medical records. As discussed in a previous blog, the OCR is enforcing patient rights by...more
Health care technology has seen an incredible amount of change over the past twelve months. As health care providers and entities continue to provide patient care in unprecedented times, it is becoming increasingly important...more
2020 was an active year for HIPAA regulatory activity by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR). In this article, we take a look at some of the HIPAA highlights from 2020 and...more
Report on Patient Privacy 18, no. 1 (January 2021) - The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) settled its 13th enforcement action in its Right of Access Initiative, first announced in 2019 to support individuals’ rights to...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has announced a flurry of enforcement actions in the last quarter of 2020 as part of its Right of Access Initiative....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
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
For the second year in a row, Foley & Lardner LLP and PYA hosted a compliance master class on various health-related compliance issues. “Let’s Talk Compliance” is an annual one-day event featuring a panel of presenters that...more
Thanks to a federal judge, the Office for Civil Rights has modified its rules for sending records to third parties. Covered entities are no longer required by HIPAA to send non-electronic protected health information (“PHI”)...more
The HIPAA privacy rules give special protection to “psychotherapy notes,” but providers often misunderstand what are and are not covered and how they differ from other mental health records. I. “Psychotherapy Notes”...more
Access to healthcare information (or lack thereof) has always been touted as one of the key factors/necessities to realizing the promise of technology in the delivery of healthcare. Despite various legislative, judicial,...more
Most health care providers are aware that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) and its accompanying negotiations provide for the privacy and security of patients’ health care...more
Enforcement activity by the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) showed no signs of slowing throughout 2018 and has already picked up speed in 2019. More recent and significant actions...more
Executive Summary: If an institution doesn’t designate which functions are and are not covered by HIPAA, the assumption is that all activities fall under the HIPAA compliance umbrella. Recent federal actions against...more
Health care providers often are unaware of federal laws that regulate the process by which they charge patients for copies of medical records. Many providers incorrectly assume that only the law of the state in which the...more
When health care providers provide copies of medical records to an individual patient or to third parties at the direction of that individual patient, they are permitted under HIPAA to recover “a reasonable, cost-based fee.”...more