A federal judge in Texas just tossed out Biden-era reproductive healthcare privacy protections, halting a 2024 final rule with nationwide effect. The rule, which largely took effect in December and created new HIPAA privacy...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
Yesterday, DHHS’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a $100,000 settlement with a dissolved medical records moving and storage company in Illinois. This is another example of OCR bringing enforcement actions against a...more
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has published answers to some frequently asked questions about an individual’s right to access identifiable health information. Are the FAQs boring? Absolutely. But are they...more
Over the past year, numerous lawsuits and complaints to the HHS Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) have been filed by plaintiffs’ attorneys over a seemingly obscure HIPAA issue – the rate that health care providers and their...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
On September 2, 2015, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) announced that Cancer Care Group, P.C. (CCG), a physician practice located in Indiana, agreed to pay $750,000 as part of a settlement to resolve...more
Changes to the HIPAA Enforcement Rule - Background: On October 30, 2009, HHS issued an interim final rule revising the Enforcement Rule to incorporate provisions of the HITECH Act. The NPRM then proposed a number of...more