From OCR to AI The Future of Media and Image Analysis in eDiscovery
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
In today’s healthcare environment, compliance is a defining element of patient care quality, operational integrity, and public trust. Oversight from agencies such as the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the Centers for Medicare...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
Over the course of the past few months, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), both of which are divisions of the U.S. Department of Health and...more
Report on Patient Privacy 23, no. 11 (November, 2023) The American Hospital Association (AHA) is urging federal lawmakers to intervene with the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) so that hospitals and health systems can...more
Government regulators are seemingly as numerous as the stars nowadays, especially in the universe of data incidents. When organizations experience a data incident, they will need to quickly assess what happened, why it...more
On July 20, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and the Office for Civil Rights of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (“OCR”) announced that they had sent a warning letter to about 130 hospital...more
On December 1, 2022, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a Bulletin on the obligations of covered entities and business associates (regulated entities) under the...more
Most companies operating websites and mobile apps use some form of tracking technologies on these digital properties. While these types of technologies have been used for some time and serve a variety of purposes, the use of...more
For years, patients and healthcare companies have been wrestling with privacy issues relating to cookies, pixels and other tracking technologies. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Civil Rights...more
HIPAA requires covered entities and business associates to report to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) all breaches of unsecured protected health information when the incident involves fewer than 500 individuals no later than...more
CYBERSECURITY - GAO Report Identifies Need for DOE to Address Risks to Electrical Distribution System - The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently completed and published a study on electricity...more
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued a notice this week stating that it will not impose penalties for HIPAA non-compliance in connection with a covered entity health care provider’s or business associate’s good faith use...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently announced that it had entered into a Resolution Agreement, Corrective Action Plan, and settlement with Lifetime Healthcare, Inc., the...more
In a continuation of its recent enforcement streak, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced two new HIPAA settlements last week. The first settlement is with Aetna Life...more
On October 8, 2020, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal (AG) announced that his office has entered into a multi-state settlement agreement with Community Health Systems, Inc. (CHS) stemming from an investigation of a...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has announced that it has settled potential violations of HIPAA with Athens Orthopedic Clinic PA (Athens) for $1.5 million, following an...more
Health care providers and contractors continue to be a popular target for hackers. Recently, CHSPSC LLC (CHSPSC), which provides various services to hospitals and clinics indirectly owned by Community Health Systems, Inc. of...more
On September 25, 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it reached a settlement with Premera Blue Cross (PBC), a health plan operating in Washington and Alaska,...more
The third HIPAA settlement to be announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services within one week was a big one. On September 25, HHS announced that Premera Blue Cross agreed to pay $6.85 million to HHS’s Office...more
With apologies to John Donne, ask not for whom the bells tolls, HIPAA business associates, it tolls for thee! While it has been the law for some time that business associates could be held directly liable for breaches,...more
CYBERSECURITY - VA Alerting 46,000 Veterans of Compromise - The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Management (VA) has announced that it is notifying approximately 46,000 veterans that their personal...more
Recent enforcement actions by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) underscore the importance of providing patients with copies of their protected health information (PHI) as required by HIPAA. Failure to provide access exposes...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 August 24, 2020, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued amended guidance on HIPAA compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic. On June 12, 2020, OCR issued initial guidance on how the HIPAA Privacy Rule permits covered...more
Small health care organizations may think they are under the radar of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), but a settlement the OCR agreed to last week should disabuse small health care providers of that notion....more