The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights released plans to audit 150 covered entities under its pilot HIPAA audit program. Covered entities should review HIPAA compliance policies and complete a security risk assessment to ready themselves for potential audit.

On November 8, 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) published on its website the details of its pilot program to perform up to 150 audits of compliance with the privacy, security and breach notification standards (collectively, the Standards) adopted under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) between November 2011 and December 2012 (the Pilot Audit Program).