Privacy Series: HIPAA Breaches - When It Is, and When It Is Not a Breach
Compliance Perspective: What's New in Healthcare Privacy
On July 19, Change Healthcare Ince. filed a breach report with HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) concerning its mammoth ransomware attack and breach. The organization’s breach report to OCR identifies just 500 individuals as...more
In March of this year, The Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services issued a letter addressing the recent cybersecurity incident impacting many health care entities, primarily Change Healthcare,...more
Data Breaches risk legal consequences—both from state and federal governments and consumers, as well as reputational harm. Last month, MCNA—a dental benefit provider—provided notice of a data breach that exposed the...more
General and specialty compliance training from the comfort of your home or office! HCCA’s Regional Healthcare Compliance Conferences provide practitioners with virtual compliance training that includes updates on the...more
HIPAA-covered entities should note the quickly approaching March 1, 2022 deadline for reporting breaches of unsecured protected health information that occurred in 2021 and involved fewer than 500 individuals. This article...more
Our Virtual Regional Healthcare Compliance Conferences provide updates on the latest news in regulatory requirement, compliance enforcement, and strategies to develop effective compliance programs. Watch, listen, and ask...more
Recently the Health Care Compliance Association released the new Health Care Privacy Handbook, 3rd Edition. https://www.hcca-info.org/health-care-privacy-handbook To learn what’s new in the book and in healthcare privacy...more
Report on Patient Privacy 20, no. 12 (December 10, 2020) - Suspected North Korean hackers have tried to break into the systems of British drugmaker AstraZeneca in recent weeks as the company races to deploy its COVID-19...more
Report on Patient Privacy 20, no. 11 (November 2020) - In her 14-plus years of investigating and blogging about hacking and breaches, “Dissent” has been yelled at, threatened with lawsuits and accused of being a criminal....more
Premera Blue Cross (Premera) has agreed to settle with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for $6.85 million over allegations of violations of HIPAA after an investigation of a data breach that occurred in 2014 affecting 10.4...more
Every year, we remind our readers that the HIPAA data breach notification regulations require covered entities to notify the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of any reportable data breaches that involved fewer than 500...more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it has fined the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (TXHHS) $1.6 million for HIPAA violations. This is one of the few fines the OCR has levied against a state agency....more
EU Court Allows Class Action to Proceed, Sets Precedent for Future Data Breach Class Actions - A class action brought against Google will be allowed to move forward after the plaintiff’s appeal was permitted, allowing him to...more
Reflecting the movement to toughen data security laws on a state-by-state basis, on July 25, 2019, Governor Cuomo signed into law the Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security Act (the "SHIELD Act" or the "Act"). The...more
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost recently announced a multistate settlement that will require health insurance company Premera Blue Cross to pay $10 million following a breach of protected health information (PHI). According...more
On August 12, Mahesh Nattanmai, New York’s Chief Health Information Officer, issued a notice letter (“the notice”) on behalf of the New York State Department of Health (“Department”) requiring healthcare providers to use a...more
• New York recently enacted the Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security (SHIELD) Act, which expands data breach notification requirements and imposes new data security obligations on businesses that own, license or,...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
Twelve state attorneys general have brought suit against two medical Information Technology companies. The AGs allege that the companies, Medical Informatics Engineering Inc. and its subsidiary, NoMoreClipboard LLC, had poor...more
The effects of a data breach can be disastrous for any company, but especially for a nonprofit organization, not only because of the harm to the affected individuals, including those served by the organization, but also the...more