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
HIPAA Tips With Williams Mullen - Telehealth After the Pandemic
Relaxed HIPAA Restrictions For Providers Using Telehealth
Webinar: Investigating and Resolving Sexual Assaults on Campus
Attestations are at the heart of permissible disclosures under the HHS Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) new reproductive health privacy rule—and OCR wants covered entities (CEs) and business associates (BA) to use them now. The...more
On April 22, 2024, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced final regulatory updates to the Privacy Rule under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of...more
Kaiser Permanente is notifying 13.4 million current and former members that their personal information may have been compromised when it was transmitted to tech giants Google, Microsoft Bing and X (formerly Twitter) when...more
On March 18, 2024, The Office for Civil Rights OCR revised its guidance on “Use of Online Tracking Technologies by HIPAA Covered Entities and Business Associates” and issued a bulletin to remind regulated entities and the...more
In July 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR) sent a joint letter to approximately 130 hospital systems and telehealth providers raising...more
On June 16, 2023, nearly half of the State Attorneys General penned a letter (the “Letter”) to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) advocating for broader privacy protections...more
Recently, lawsuits have been filed against Duke and WakeMed regarding their use of Meta’s Meta Pixel tracking product and the alleged improper disclosure of patients’ protected health information (“PHI”). The U.S. Department...more
In June 2022, the HHS Office for Civil Rights issued new HIPAA Privacy Rule Guidance in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization and state legislation which followed the decision...more
On 28 June 2022, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra directed the Office for Civil...more
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which interpreted a right to abortion in the Constitution through the 14th Amendment, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Civil...more
On June 29, 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued guidance for healthcare providers and patients concerning the privacy protections afforded to a patient’s health information...more
Patient privacy concerns are at an all-time high following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Following their statements affirming that abortion constitutes basic and essential health...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) issued guidance regarding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) privacy rule (the “Privacy Rule”) in the...more
On September 30, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it issued guidance to clarify that the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not prohibit businesses from asking customers,...more
When use or disclosure of an individual’s health information or medical records is at issue, the assumption seems to be, much more often than not, that the HIPAA privacy and security rules apply. This has certainly been the...more
On May 6, 2021, the comment period for the proposed modification to regulations implementing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) Privacy Rule and Health Information Technology for...more
On December 10, 2020, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) with proposed modifications to the Standards for the Privacy of...more
Halloween or HIPAA: Which is Scarier? HIPAA and the Pandemic - Telehealth: - On Friday, March 20, 2020, OCR announced it will “exercise its enforcement discretion and will not impose penalties for noncompliance with...more
The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic visited on America in the past several months has quickly reinvigorated the foundational and important debate concerning where, in a free society, individual autonomy ends (or should end) and...more
On May 5, 2020, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued additional guidance on HIPAA compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic. OCR affirmed that the restrictions on disclosures of protected health information...more
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) last month provided guidance and a reminder to HIPAA covered entities and their business associates regarding the sharing of patient health information (PHI) under the Health Insurance...more
Since the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) was first detected in December, the death toll has continued to rise as the virus quickly spreads. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials have stated that while the immediate...more
On June 26, 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued two new FAQs that clarify: The parameters around covered entities sharing protected health information (PHI) for a...more
The Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) issued a request for information (“RFI”) to assist OCR in identifying provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) privacy and security regulations (the...more
Under HIPAA, patients have a right to information about certain disclosures, referred to as an accounting. Under the current iteration of the regulations, covered entities and business associates need not account for...more