HIPAA

Subscribe to HIPAA

President Biden issued an Executive Order on September 9, 2021 (the “EO”) that will lead to required COVID-19 vaccinations for workers in most health care facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funds.  This covers approximately 50,000 health care providers across the country.

The EO also triggers COVID-19 vaccination requirements for many of these health care…

HIPAA has been around for a quarter century, but confusion continues as to its scope and applicability.   The COVID pandemic, surge in Delta variant cases, and increasing number of employer and government vaccine mandates has triggered a new wave of interest in other people’s’ vaccination status. Many people are surprised to learn that HIPAA does…

Covered entities beware: a timing pitfall lurks within the recently adopted rules prohibiting information blocking.  We have posted about OCR’s “Right to Access Initiative” and numerous enforcement actions taken to make sure that covered entities respond to patient access requests in a timely manner.  The HIPAA Privacy Rule requires covered entities to respond to access…

A recent conversation with a colleague in California prompted me to write this. He said that as part of its back-to-school plan, his children’s elementary school district “highly encouraged” that all students be tested for COVID-19 before returning to class. The district provided families with an in-home saliva test and asked parents to collect their…

Mental Health/substance abuse providers and providers treating HIV/AIDS patients are held to a higher standard when it comes to protecting medical records, requiring additional levels of consent and analysis prior to productions. However, recent settlements published by the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services (OCR) on September 15, 2020…