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
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (HHS OCR) announced that it had entered into a settlement agreement with St. Elizabeth's Medical Center (SEMC) in Brighton,...more
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates that both Covered Entities and Business Associates protect the security of Protected Health Information (PHI) in a variety of ways. Specifically,...more
A recently announced settlement between Anchorage Community Mental Health (“ACMHS”) and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) emphasizes, once again, the importance of compliance with...more
Later this year, the Department of Health and Human Services (“DHHS”) is expected to launch its permanent HIPAA Audit Program. The HIPAA Audit Program is authorized under Section 13411 of the HITECH Act, and is designed to...more