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
Last year, the federal Office for Civil Rights (OCR) modified the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule to strengthen protections for reproductive health care information (the “2024 Rule”)....more
Share on Twitter Share by Email Share Back to top HIPAA Security Risk Analyses (SRAs) should be the foundation of every digital health company’s cybersecurity compliance. Far more than a checkbox exercise, a comprehensive SRA...more
In the past several weeks, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS"), Office for Civil Rights ("OCR") has announced settlements with three health care organizations — Comstar, LLC ("Comstar"); Guam Memorial...more
A single incident that may have started as a personal vendetta or an extortion threat seven years ago has cost a Florida health care system $800,000, and comes on the heels of an unrelated breach suffered by a different...more
Must a student with a disability prove that their school acted in “bad faith” to win a discrimination case? Until now, courts in some parts of the country said yes, requiring disabled students to meet a higher standard than...more
As the academic year draws to a close, Title IX practitioners may feel increased pressure to resolve outstanding Title IX complaints before graduation, summer breaks, and other transitions. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR)...more
On June 4, 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the appointment of Paula M. Stannard as the Director of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). As Director, Stannard will lead the enforcement of...more
Health care organizations are under pressure to shore up their cybersecurity response efforts. Much of this pressure is coming from the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which has made...more
Given that it appears the 2020 Title IX Regulations will remain the regulatory law of the land for at least the next several years, the Title IX field is once again working with a prescriptive set of regulations applicable to...more
What's New? On May 28, 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced an $800,000 settlement with a large Florida-based health care provider over potential violations of the...more
When Jerry Menikoff retired at the end of 2022 after leading the HHS Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) for 14 years, he left behind an agency limping along with 20 employees, less than half of what it needed. For...more
In the first five months of 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced it had entered into ten Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) resolution...more
In October, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) fined Providence Medical Institute (PMI) $240,000, an amount that reflected a 20% discount for having “recognized security practices” (RSPs) in place. But many more covered...more
In today’s legal landscape, investigations and discovery often involve processing thousands of complex documents. Traditional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology struggles with the varied document types legal...more
PIH Health, a health care entity located in California, suffered a data breach in June 2019 when 45 employee email accounts were compromised in a targeted phishing campaign. The accounts contained the protected health...more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on April 10, 2025, that it has settled alleged HIPAA Security Rule violations with Northeast Radiology for $350,000....more
Since January, multiple fundamental developments have dramatically altered the Title IX landscape, signaling a seismic shift in its interpretation and enforcement. These developments include a rapidly escalating and public...more
Following the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recent publication of four settlements as part of a new Risk Analysis Audit Initiative. We explore the current regulatory language for Risk Analysis, the proposed language for Risk...more
Today, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of the Office of Inspector General and Office of General Counsel, one of just a dozen or so agencies reporting directly to the secretary....more
Welcome to your monthly rundown of all things cyber, privacy, and technology, where we highlight all the happenings you may have missed. ...more
Welcome to our fourth issue of 2025 of The Health Record -- our healthcare law insights e-newsletter. In this edition, we look at prior authorization transparency and physician decision-making; the impact of Medicaid cuts...more
Background - On March 21, 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced a settlement with Health Fitness Corporation (“Health Fitness”), a company that provides wellness...more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has renewed its focus on two critical areas of HIPAA compliance: risk analysis and individual right of access. These enforcement...more
The long-rumored plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) took a formal step forward on March 20, 2025, when President Trump signed an Executive Order calling for the agency’s closure. While headlines suggest...more
On March 6, 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced a civil money penalty (“CMP”) of $200,000 against Oregon Health & Science University (“OHSU”) for failing to...more