This coming Friday, April 19th, Seton Hall Law in collaboration with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office is offering a fantastic event called: “HIPAA, HITECH & Beyond: Protecting Healthcare Data in Our Cyber World”, which promises to examine current issues, enforcement trends, and...
Meaningful Use Sees Impressive Payouts since Beginning CMS recently released the numbers for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs through February 2013. About $12.6 billion has been paid out to participants by the program so far. Although only 4,299 hospitals are actively...
HHS Releases RFI on Interoperability and HIE HHS, CMS and ONC have released a Request for Information (RFI) seeking input on policies and programs to encourage health information exchange (HIE) through interoperable systems. Although the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs and...
What Do I Need To Do to Comply with the HITECH Omnibus Rule? (the short version, please) The HITECH Omnibus Rule clocked-in at 563 pages, and we have read, digested and condensed the nuts and bolts for you here in our February 2013 edition of our Health Law Diagnosis newsletter. But if...
Note to Mr. Donald Trump: According to HHS’ New Omnibus Rule, You Can Have A Copy of That Birth Certificate in About 100 or so Years Because HIPAA Doesn’t Apply One change under the Omnibus Rule that is somewhat flying under the radar is that HIPAA no longer will apply to a patients’...
“Significant Risk of Harm” No Longer Required to Trigger Breach Notification When it comes to responding to a Breach, what every Covered Entity (CE) and Business Associate (BA) wants to know is “Do we have to notify, or not?” Completing a documented “Risk Assessment” has always been...
Deciphering the HITECH Omnibus Rule: Business Associates Since the HITECH Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) was released in July of 2010, covered entities and business associates have been waiting (im)patiently for the Final HITECH Omnibus Rule to be released. As of this past...
FINALLY! HHS Releases the Final HIPAA/HITECH Omnibus Rule. Finally, the long awaited Final Rules are out. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) posted the HIPAA/HITECH “Omnibus Rule” on January 17, 2013 at 4:15 pm. You can download a copy here, or go straight to the source...
ONC Setting Stage for NHIN Governance Guidance Last year, ONC announced that it would not be moving forward on establishing governance regulations for the Nationwide Health Information Network (now called the “eHealth Exchange”) as a result of the comments and feedback it received. ...
Kaiser Permanente Faces Investigation Over Inappropriate Storage of Patient Records by Contractor Kaiser Permanente is facing investigation over the handling of approximately 300,000 patient records by a contract storage firm. According to an article in the LA Times, Kaiser contracted...
HHS Rings in 2013 with News of Settlement for Small Breach We hope all of our readers had a happy and relaxing holiday season, and we wish you all the best for this New Year! It seems fitting for the first post of the year to revolve around HHS’s announcement of its first breach settlement...
CMS Releases Meaningful Use Changes in Interim Final Rule with Comment CMS has announced the release of an Interim Final Rule with Comment (“IFC”) that makes several changes to the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs and 2014 EHR Certification Criteria. Short and sweet, the...
OIG Finds Fault with CMS Meaningful Use Oversight In a report released on November 29, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) chastised CMS for not doing a better job of pre and post-payment oversight for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs (Meaningful Use). As of September...
OCR Releases HIPAA De-identification Q&A Guidance With the weekend coming up, why not take a break from the holiday frenzy and read through OCR’s new HIPAA De-identification guidance. The approximately 30-page guidance document is an easy read, even for those of us who aren’t...
SERCH Project Recommendations for HIE and Disaster Preparedness As Helen noted in her post on Thanksgiving, Superstorm Sandy re-emphasized the need for health care organizations to have plans in place for disaster preparedness, data backup and recovery. As New York and New Jersey...