A healthcare provider delivering pain management services in Florida and other states faces a $1.19 million civil monetary penalty from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR)....more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on December 3 that it imposed a $1.19 million penalty on Gulf Coast Pain Consultants, a pain management practice in Florida, following...more
President-Elect Trump has proposed Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer as the next Secretary of Labor. The selection is particularly notable for the clear pro-union leanings of the nominee of a Republican president-elect. Any effort...more
Covered entities (CEs) and business associates (BAs) may receive a “discount” for having recognized security practices (RSPs) in place when the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) calculates financial penalties for Security...more
July 25 was not a good week for the Department of Labor (“DOL”) in Texas. On July 25, the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, in a civil action filed by the Federation of Americans for Consumer Choice, placed a...more
This article was originally published on Kitces.com, on May 15, 2024, and is available at at DoL’s Retirement Security Rule & PTE 2020-02 Amendment: What Advisers Need to Know Now about Giving Rollover Advice After September...more
Many HIPAA covered entities and business associates struggle with developing and implementing a sanctions policy. What should it say, is zero-tolerance required, do we have to impose discipline in every case, etc. These are...more
Report on Patient Privacy 22, no. 4 (April, 2022) - By many measures, David Northcutt’s unsuccessful 2018 bid for the Alabama senate was a costly one. Northcutt, a dentist, loaned his campaign $73,000 throughout the...more
Users of Universal Health Services (UHS), one of the largest healthcare systems in the country, recently lost access to electronic medical records when UHS suffered a ransomware attack and took its systems offline to...more
Learning Objectives: - Learn about the technology and security aspects of allowing employees to work remotely - Identify critical areas of risk and how to mitigate that risk for remote workers - Apply the Security...more
The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic visited on America in the past several months has quickly reinvigorated the foundational and important debate concerning where, in a free society, individual autonomy ends (or should end) and...more
On July 23, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a resolution agreement with a small health care provider regarding an alleged breach of HIPAA Security Rule...more
Medical Informatics Engineering, Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiaries (MIE) and the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS-OCR) entered into a $100,000 settlement and two-year...more
On May 6, 2019, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced an agreement with Touchstone Medical Imaging, LLC (Touchstone)...more
Proposed Modifications to HIPAA Regulations under Consideration - On December 14, 2018, HHS issued its Request for Information on Modifying HIPAA Rules to Improve Coordinated Care as part of its Regulatory Sprint to...more
"Open the pod door, HAL" • Commercial voice-activated intelligent personal assistants from Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, among others, are growing in popularity. • A report from NPR and Edison Research states...more
In December 2018, twelve state Attorneys General ("AGs") jointly filed suit against Medical Informatics Engineering, Inc. (“MIE”) claiming it violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and its related...more
The virtual world offers opportunities and obligations not found in nature. For a couple of years, my wife has followed the adventures of a bonded eagle couple, Liberty and Freedom, residing in the hills near Hanover,...more
According to a recent U.S. Government Interagency report, ransomware is the fastest growing malware threat, targeting users of all types. An incredible 51 percent of respondents in a January 2017 study by the Ponemon...more
The Department of Health and Human Services’ (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) is responsible for enforcing the Privacy and Security Rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”)....more
On April 12, 2017, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced a settlement and corrective action plan with a Colorado federally-qualified health center, Metro Community Provider Network (“MCPN”), after a 2012 breach of...more
On February 16, 2017, HHS OCR announced that Memorial Healthcare Systems (MHS) had paid the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) $5.5 million to settle potential violations of HIPAA’s Privacy and Security Rules...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently announced a $750,000 fine and resolution agreement, including a Corrective Action Plan (CAP), for Cancer Care Group, P.C. (CCG), a...more
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has announced that due to stakeholder feed-back, the period to submit comments for the draft guide, “Securing Electronic Health Records on Mobile Devices” has been extended...more
Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (HHS OCR) have recently selected a vendor to conduct the second wave of HIPAA audits. These so-called “Phase 2 Audits” are set to commence...more