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More and more often, health care data is stolen or made inaccessible by targeted ransomware attacks. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) published a newsletter this week that provides warnings for HIPAA covered entities and business associates. It also provides practical tips to prevent and help you survive these attacks.

OCR’s warnings should resonate with…

Last May, around the time many schools let out for the summer, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) published guidance entitled “Direct Liability of Business Associates” (the “Guidance”), which focuses, not surprisingly, on OCR’s ability to take enforcement action directly against HIPAA business associates. I meant to write about this guidance before Memorial…

“TMI” usually means “too much information”, but it was used aptly by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) as an acronym for a covered entity that exposed protected health information (PHI) of more than 300,000 patients through an insecurely configured server. According to the April 5, 2019 Resolution Agreement, the covered entity, Touchstone Medical…

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…

HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR)’s April 3, 2019 cybersecurity newsletter highlights one of the more challenging cybersecurity vulnerabilities faced by covered entities and business associates.  OCR reminds covered entities (CEs) and business associates (BAs) that compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule can help, but stops a bit short of providing concrete guidance as to…

In our most recent post, the Top 5 Common HIPAA Mistakes to Avoid in 2018, we noted that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has recently published guidance on disclosing protected health information (PHI) related to overdose victims. OCR published this and other guidance within the last…

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…

A patient requests a copy of her medical record, and the hospital charges the per-page amount permitted under state law. Does this violate HIPAA? It may.

In the spring of 2016, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that enforces HIPAA, issued a new guidance…

According to the latest HIPAA-related guidance (Guidance) published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a cloud service provider (CSP) maintaining a client’s protected health information (PHI) is a business associate even when the CSP can’t access or view the PHI. In other words, even where the PHI is encrypted…