$25,000 OCR Settlement Reached With Federally Qualified Health Center
From mid-March to mid-July of 2020, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was very busy… But not because it was issuing [...]
HHS Amends Substance Abuse Records Confidentiality Rules
Recently, the 42 CFR Part 2 regulations, which serve to protect substance abuse disorder patient records, were revised. Their revised regulation facilitates better coordination of care in response to [...]
Failure to Deidentify PHI Exposed Hundreds of Patients
On April 9 students from the University of Delaware contacted the Delaware Division of Developmental Disabilities Services (DDDS) regarding a research project. The students requested demographic [...]
What Happens to HIPAA Lawsuits?
HIPAA lawsuits - litigation involving a plaintiff claiming violation of a HIPAA regulation - usually do not get very far, as the plaintiffs in a data breach lawsuit against [...]
275,000 Affected by Billing Vendor Breach
Benefit Recovery Specialists Inc., a debt collection and billing vendor based in Houston, suffered a breach. The billing vendor breach affected 275,000 patients as the vendor [...]
HIPAA Now: What you Need to Know About HIPAA Compliance
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, there have been a lot of questions about HIPAA compliance and software. At the beginning of the crisis, the Department of Health [...]
Importance of BAA Compliance Highlighted by Breach
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) maintains a list of health-related data breaches affecting 500 or more individuals. HHS obtains this information from the [...]
New CMS Telehealth Guidance Proposed
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed the Home Health Prospective Payment System Rule in June to increase Medicare payment rates for home health [...]
The HHS To-Do List: HHS Privacy and Security Regulatory Priorities
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, has not undergone significant regulatory change since 2013. Since then, HHS privacy and security initiatives have been proposed. [...]
One Breach Led to Another: Independence Blue Cross Breach
In 2018, the MyFitnessPal app was hacked, affecting 150 million users. The hack exposed the login credentials for app users; a year later, it was discovered [...]
