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
Applicable Provider Types: All - Is Your Entity in Compliance? Recent regulatory language makes clear that most healthcare providers must provide free translators or interpreters for patients with limited English...more
On September 4, Texas Attorney General (AG) Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR), challenging two key Health Insurance Portability and...more
Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a complaint in federal district court against HHS and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) challenging a recently issued rule strengthening protection of protected health...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: With the myriad claims for religious accommodation that came out of mandatory COVID vaccination policies, employers have become familiar how to handle requests for religious accommodation in the workplace. ...more
On August 29, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) withdrew its appeal of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas’s (Court) June 20, 2024 decision in...more
Last year, the American Hospital Association (AHA) sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas, requesting that HHS be barred from enforcing a new...more
On August 29, 2024, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) withdrew its appeal of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas’s June 20, 2024, decision in American...more
On August 19, 2024, the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) filed a notice of appeal of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas’s June 20, 2024, decision in American...more
Melanie Fontes Rainer recently marked the completion of her second year leading the Office for Civil Rights at HHS. In this podcast she shared some of the accomplishments over this time as well as what the health care...more
On June 20, a federal district court in Texas ruled that the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) exceeded its authority under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act...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
On August 1, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced a civil monetary penalty of $115,200 against American Medical Response (“AMR”) based on a complaint that...more
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and subsequent state abortion bans, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a...more
As discussed in our prior blog post, on April 26, 2024, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) at the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) issued final regulations (“Reproductive Health Care Rule”) under the Health...more
On August 1, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced the imposition of a civil monetary penalty (“CMP”) of $115,200 collected against American Medical Response...more
Earlier we discussed the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) of the US Department of Health and Human Services final rules relating to reproductive health care information (the “Final Rules”). In our prior blog we discussed that...more
On June 28, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (Loper Bright), the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the doctrine of Chevron deference, upending 40 years of precedent and significantly shifting power to the courts to...more
The Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in 2010, contained a provision (commonly referred to as Section 1557) prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in...more
The Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) of the US Department of Health and Human Services recently released a final rule (“Final Rule”) to update the HIPAA Privacy Rules for reproductive health care information. The Final Rule...more
As the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) annually funds over $38 billion in extramural research, including about $6 billion for clinical trials. On May 28,...more
On July 1, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office For Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced a $950,000 settlement with Heritage Valley Health System (“Heritage Valley”) and a three-year Corrective...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
On July 1, 2024, the HHS Office of Civil Rights (OCR) announced that Pennsylvania-based healthcare system, Heritage Valley Health System (Heritage Valley), has agreed to pay $950,000 to settle potential violations of the...more
In a narrow but significant ruling in American Hospital Association et al. v. Xavier Becerra, et al., No. 4:23-cv-01110-P, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Hon. Mark T. Pittman) ruled that one...more