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
Today, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of the Office of Inspector General and Office of General Counsel, one of just a dozen or so agencies reporting directly to the secretary....more
Starting April 3, Ohio hospitals will have to navigate new requirements under House Bill 173. This law mandates greater transparency in healthcare pricing. It also includes rules for selling or targeted advertising related to...more
2024 marked another significant year for privacy law, with new state legislation and high-stakes litigation reshaping the landscape. Legal battles over tracking technologies, biometric data, and children’s privacy...more
Nearly six years to the day that Warby Parker reported a breach affecting nearly 200,000 individuals, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) imposed a $1.5 million fine on the eyewear giant. Investigated by OCR under the Biden...more
The saga that led Children’s Hospital Colorado to accept a fine of more than $500,000 imposed by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) began on July 11, 2017, when a physician’s email account containing details on 3,300...more
On April 22, 2024, the Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued the HIPAA Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy Final Rule. The final rule limits the sharing of protected health...more
Recent federal enforcement actions have brought home the lesson that there’s really no acceptable reason for denying a patient timely access to medical records. Last year, for example, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR)...more
On December 17, 2024, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ASTP) published the Health Data,...more
In December 2024, the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (“ASTP/ONC”) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) published two...more
It’s not immediately obvious why someone would want to disclose a health care test result as part of a job application. But one such request spurred a Pennsylvania entity to provide a lot more than that: it sent her whole...more
In addition to holiday celebrations, the month of December typically ushers in a final round of enforcement actions by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR), and 2024 is no...more
On July 19, Change Healthcare Ince. filed a breach report with HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) concerning its mammoth ransomware attack and breach. The organization’s breach report to OCR identifies just 500 individuals as...more
Attestations are at the heart of permissible disclosures under the HHS Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) new reproductive health privacy rule—and OCR wants covered entities (CEs) and business associates (BA) to use them now. The...more
What are the top 5 data privacy concerns for my clients the past couple of months? Here are some notes I recently compiled for a meeting of Fox Rothschild’s national Privacy Law Practice Group. Patchwork Paralysis - •How...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
Ideal for professionals with some compliance knowledge and experience, HCCA’s Healthcare Privacy Compliance Academy offers practitioners a deeper understanding of effective compliance management in a healthcare setting. The...more
On November 2, 2023, the American Hospital Association and Texas Hospital Association, in conjunction with the Texas Health Resources and United Regional Health Care System, filed suit against the Secretary of the Department...more
Report on Patient Privacy 23, no. 10 (October, 2023) By 2016, it should have been clear to HIPAA covered entities that a security risk analysis—and corresponding risk management plan—were compliance basics. Yet, a new...more
Designed for professionals with some compliance knowledge and experience, HCCA’s Healthcare Privacy Compliance Academy is ideal for practitioners who want a deeper understanding of effective compliance management in a...more
Over the past year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has emerged as a leading actor in the health privacy enforcement space, spearheading enforcement actions, policy statements, and regulatory changes all aimed at...more
The FTC and OCR at HHS are continuing to scrutinize the use of tracking technologies that may reveal information about a person’s health or health status. Both agencies recently sent a letter to a reported 130 hospitals and...more
Washington greatly expanded the protection for consumers’ identifiable health information by enacting the “My Health My Data Act” (MHMDA), in an effort to close the gap between HIPAA protections and the laws protecting the...more
A patient surfs a hospital system’s website and reads an article about depression and anxiety. The patient then searches the hospital’s website for mental health providers in the area. A few hours later, the patient logs into...more
Social media’s interplay with healthcare privacy presents a constantly evolving challenge. ICYMI (“in case you missed it”), there is an uptick in enforcement and scrutiny IRL (“in real life”) related to communications through...more