Privacy Series: HIPAA Breaches - When It Is, and When It Is Not a Breach
Compliance Perspective: What's New in Healthcare Privacy
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
Who will notify the potentially millions of individuals whose information might have been jeopardized by the massive cyberattack on Change Healthcare? Since the affiliate of UnitedHealth Group (UHG) first reported the...more
Report on Patient Privacy Volume 22, Number 11. November 2022 - The second largest nonprofit hospital chain in the U.S. has been grappling with an Oct. 3 cybersecurity incident that affected facilities across the country,...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
Cyber-attacks on health care entities are becoming increasingly frequent, and the resulting data breaches are often complex. In the event of a cyber-attack, health care entities and their business associates must adhere to...more
Oklahoma State University’s Center for Health Services recently paid $875,000 to settle potential HIPAA violations after a cyberattack resulted in the unauthorized access of its patients’ protected health information. A...more
According to the 2022 State of Ransomware Report issued recently by Sophos, it surveyed 5,600 IT professionals from 31 countries, including professionals in the health care sector. Those professionals in the health care...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
Cyberattacks against healthcare providers accounted for 79% of all reported data breaches in 2020. (See here). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and...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
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
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
Regulatory bodies are upping the ante when it comes to settling with companies that have suffered data breaches. In addition to the below settlements, see also the settlement between the OCR and Dignity Health....more
CYBERSECURITY - OFAC Issues Advisory on Sanctions for Facilitating Ransomware Payments - On October 1, 2020, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued an advisory “to...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
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
Health care organizations continue to be a popular target for hackers. According to information from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), over 30 reports of data breaches have been filed by health care...more
It is being reported that LifeLabs, a Canadian lab company that is the largest provider of laboratory diagnostics and lab testing services in Canada, recently paid an undisclosed ransom to hackers who compromised its computer...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
In accordance with the Inflation Adjustment Act, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has updated its regulations to reflect required annual inflation-related increases to civil monetary penalties, including...more
Health care providers operate in one of the most highly regulated industries in terms of compliance and governmental oversight. As a result, providers face a number of regulatory and compliance challenges each year....more
Regulators, industry experts, and researchers provided insight into health privacy and security enforcement trends, emerging threats, and new tools at a recent conference focused on the Health Insurance Portability and...more
Consistent with our experience, security firm McAfee has confirmed in a report that ransomware attacks have doubled in 2019. Medical providers have been hit hard this year, and one provider, Wood Ranch Medical, located in...more
As readers of this blog know, data breaches in the health care industry are all too common. Healthcare organizations are an attractive target for hackers because of the nature and amount of personal information that they...more