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
After months of uncertainty and multiple letters from industry associations advocating on behalf of the healthcare industry with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR), covered...more
Over the past decade, the number of health care data breaches reported to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) has increased dramatically. From 2009 to 2022, over 5,000 data...more
Issue a final rule revising the privacy regulation and write guidance on the information blocking rule. Formalize the fledgling audit program required by Congress more than 10 years ago. Engage with providers and other...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 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
A recent Resolution Agreement between a solo practitioner physician practice and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reveals how complying with HIPAA by reporting a business...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
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it has entered into a settlement with a business associate that provides electronic medical records services to health...more
The Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services (OCR) announced that it has entered into a settlement with a business associate that provides electronic medical records services to health care...more
On May 24, 2019, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a new fact sheet providing a compilation of all provisions through which a business associate may be held directly...more
In the top three of the list of highly sensitive personal data to be concerned about is our medical information. It’s so sensitive because it is so personal. It used to be that our medical information was located in paper...more
According to a February 12, 2019 Press Release from Protenus, a developer of analytics for patient privacy monitoring and compliance, 15,085,302 patient records were breached in 2018 – a startling number made even more...more
Over the past thirty days, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) has reached three HIPAA breach resolutions, signaling to organizations that are covered entities and business associates under HIPAA, the importance of...more
It has been a busy few weeks for HIPAA enforcement. On Tuesday, the Office for Civil Rights announced its third resolution of a HIPAA breach in as many weeks. In this latest matter, OCR announced that Pagosa Springs Medical...more
Last week, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it had reached a settlement with a contract physician group based in Florida to resolve potential HIPAA violations relating to the sharing of protected health...more
Covered entities, including employer sponsored health plans, should brace for audits and enforcement of the Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification rules by the Department of Health & Human Service Office of Civil Rights...more
In its November newsletter, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) made a great point that we are seeing in the industry—the risks associated with previous employees. According to its newsletter, entitled “Insider Threats and...more
Fax machines are still used in the medical community, and these days, faxing may be more secure than emailing as hackers have not yet cracked the task of hacking into old fax machines. All kidding aside, fax machines have...more
To state the obvious, there has been some uncertainty regarding how the Trump Administration will affect federal agency enforcement efforts. However, at least, in regard to HIPAA Privacy and Security, the U.S. Department of...more
On April 24, 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”), announced its first settlement with a wireless health services provider, CardioNet, Inc., for alleged violations of the Health...more
In our last post, we highlighted the 2016 settlements between the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and various covered entities (and business associates), in one of OCR’s most active years. As of now, 2017 is proving to be on...more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has announced that the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) has agreed to settle an investigation against it as a result of a malware infection for $650,000, along with implementing a...more
Covered Entities and Business Associates may be ringing in the New Year with the prospect of responding to on-site HIPAA audits by federal regulators. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights...more
On October 18, 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced a $2.14 million settlement with St. Joseph Health (“St. Joseph”), a non-profit integrated Catholic healthcare delivery...more