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
On July 1, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that Heritage Valley Health System, a provider in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, agreed to pay $950,000 to resolve...more
News Briefs - New HHS Task Force Aims to Oversee AI in Healthcare - Details are emerging on a new HHS task force faced with a monumental task: creating a regulatory structure to oversee utilization of artificial intelligence...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS") Office of Civil Rights ("OCR") has entered into its first settlement of potential Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ("HIPAA") violations arising out...more
Report on Patient Privacy 23, no. 11 (November, 2023) The American Hospital Association (AHA) is urging federal lawmakers to intervene with the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) so that hospitals and health systems can...more
News Briefs - 2024 FDA Guidance Likely to Include AI, Cybersecurity - The Food and Drug Administration is ramping up production of medtech guidance, adding 18 draft documents to the list of priorities for its 2024 financial...more
The healthcare sector is a prime target for data breaches. According to a summary by the HIPAA Journal, 32% of all data breaches between 2015 and 2022 were in the healthcare sector, “almost double the number recorded in the...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on February 2 that Banner Health, a not-for-profit hospital system based in Arizona, has paid $1.25 million in order to settle alleged...more
Report on Patient Privacy 22, no. 8 (August, 2022) - The Department of Justice (DOJ) seized around $500,000 in Bitcoin ransom paid by two health care organizations in Kansas and Colorado to North Korean ransomware actors...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (the “Court”) vacated a $4,348,000 civil monetary penalty (“CMP”) imposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (“HHS-OCR”) in...more
The Compliance Institute is celebrating 25 years! Join us for the Compliance Institute's 25th anniversary, April 19-22, 2021. This year, HCCA is excited to celebrate over two decades of compliance excellence with our...more
Report on Patient Privacy 18, no. 1 (January 2021) - The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) settled its 13th enforcement action in its Right of Access Initiative, first announced in 2019 to support individuals’ rights to...more
Report on Patient Privacy 19, no. 12 (December 2019) - Sentara Hospitals, a nonprofit group of 12 medical centers in Virginia and North Carolina, will implement a fairly minimal two-year corrective action plan (CAP) and...more
On November 27, 2019 the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a $2.175 million dollar settlement with a hospital system to resolve alleged violations of HIPAA’s Breach...more
Report on Patient Privacy Volume 19, Number 11. (November 2019) ? The biggest threat to protected health information comes from carelessness within your organization, according to a brief from the Clearwater...more
Medical Informatics Engineering, Inc. (Medical Informatics) and its wholly-owned subsidiary, NoMoreClipboard, LLC, an electronic medical record and software services provider is now liable for a combined total of $1 million...more
We previously reported that Cottage Health, a health care entity operating several hospitals in California, settled with the State of California for $2 million for a security incident that occurred in 2013. On February 7,...more
A Florida staffing agency which provides physicians to hospitals and nursing homes, has agreed to a $500,000 settlement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. The settlement comes...more
The Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services has announced settlements with three different Boston-area hospitals for allegedly compromising the privacy of protected health information by inviting...more
Missouri’s Cass Regional Medical Center (CRMC) was recently hit with a ransomware attack. Existing patients continued to receive care, but incoming trauma and stroke patients were diverted to other facilities. The hospital...more
In the latest twist in a case that began last year, an administrative law judge (ALJ) agreed that a $4.3 million penalty, levied by the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) against the MD Anderson Cancer Center as a result of HIPAA...more
As has been widely reported, on May 12, 2017, organizations around the world, including Britain’s National Health Service, found their data held hostage by actors using a new variant of ransomware called WannaCry. According...more
Children’s Medical Center of Dallas (Children’s) was hit with a $3.2 million civil penalty from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for failing to take steps to properly protect...more
Two related healthcare companies were forced to pay settlements with the federal government totaling over $500,000 over allegations relating to a data breach involving patient health information. Much of the negative...more
The Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on August 4, 2016, a settlement agreement with Advocate Health Care Network, an integrated healthcare system with ten hospitals and a...more
Federal regulators announced last week that Illinois’ largest hospital chain would pay $5.5 million, a record payment under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), in connection with three 2013 data...more