In the past several weeks, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS"), Office for Civil Rights ("OCR") has announced settlements with three health care organizations — Comstar, LLC ("Comstar"); Guam Memorial...more
A single incident that may have started as a personal vendetta or an extortion threat seven years ago has cost a Florida health care system $800,000, and comes on the heels of an unrelated breach suffered by a different...more
No Longer Just a Matter of Paying the Fine and Moving On. Corporate settlement agreements used to be straightforward—pay the penalty and move on. Now, these resolutions rival complex business transactions, including...more
Report on Patient Privacy 22, no. 10 (October, 2022) - How about free? Patients daily face the machinations of getting records from their providers, and health care practices, hospitals and even dentists struggle with...more
Report on Patient Privacy 22, no. 9 (September, 2022) - When recommending best practices, federal privacy and security officials stress that organizations need to follow their protected health information (PHI) wherever...more
Report on Patient Privacy 22, no. 8 (August, 2022) - Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences’ (OSUCHS) breach might not have seemed all that serious at the time: No data is believed to have been misused,...more
Following a very quiet start to HIPAA settlement activity in 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently announced eight settlements with covered entities and business...more
On September 15, 2020, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it had settled five investigations under its HIPAA Right of Access Initiative....more