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The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will take effect on January 1, 2020 and regulates most entities that collect personal information of California residents.  CCPA was patterned after the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which went online on May 28, 2018 and has been called “GDPR-Lite.”  In May, Fox Rothschild partner Odia Kagan…

A two-physician practice in Battle Creek, Michigan is reportedly the first health care provider to cease operations as a result of a ransomware attack.  The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Brookside ENT experienced a malware attack that deleted and overwrote every medical record, bill and appointment in the practice’s system, including backups, and created encrypted…

Filefax, Inc., a defunct Illinois medical records storage and management company, has been fined $100,000 for improperly handling medical data under an agreement with the court-appointed receiver managing the company’s assets on behalf of its creditors.  This settlement has implications for both service providers and their covered entity clients.  Fox Rothschild partners Elizabeth Litten and…

Our partner Elizabeth Litten and I were recently featured again by our good friend Marla Durben Hirsch in her article in the April 2017 issue of Medical Practice Compliance Alert entitled “Business associates who farm out work create more risks for your patients’ PHI.” Full text can be found in the April, 2017 issue, but…

U.S. Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA) has been a vocal advocate for mental health reform for a number of years.  Part of his crusade is driven by his concern that the HIPAA privacy rule “routinely interferes with the timely and continuous flow of health information between health care providers, patients, and families, thereby impeding patient care,…

Federal enforcement agencies are increasingly focusing on HIPAA breaches which involve mishandling of PHI by telecommuters.  Two recent cases illustrate the liability exposure resulting from inadequate oversight of staff working remotely.

Medical equipment supplier Lincare was fined $239,800 as a result of a breach which occurred when an employee left unprotected PHI in a car…

Are strangers wandering around your health care facility with their noses buried in their smartphones? And if so, what should you do about it? They’re playing Pokémon GO, a location-based augmented reality mobile game that was released for iOS and Android devices on July 6, 2016. Its popularity exceeded all expectations (my kids are…