Supreme Court to Hear Arguments on Suit for Damages under the Privacy Act The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments tomorrow, November 30, in a suit for damages under the Privacy Act stemming from a wrongful disclosure of confidential information. Federal Aviation...
HIPAA Audits Begin November 2011, How Can Covered Entities and Business Associates Prepare? The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced that it will begin HIPAA audits of covered entities and business associates this November 2011, and its contracted...
SAMHSA Awards IT Grants for Behavioral Health The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announced last week that it will award up to $13.2 million in health information technology (HIT) grants for mental and behavioral health care settings. These grants...
ONC’s Model PHR Notice Now Available to Vendors Following the release of its Federal Health IT Strategic Plan, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) has made available a Personal Health Record (PHR) Model Privacy Notice for PHR vendors to use in communicating their data practices...
ONC Releases Ambitious Health IT Strategic Plan The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) released its Federal Health Information Technology (IT) Strategic Plan this September, detailing its goals and strategies for transforming health care through health IT over the next five...
Helen to Speak on Solving Privacy Dilemmas with Health Information Exchange at national Health Care Info Privacy Forum To Register, click here.
HIPAA Auditor Responsible for Breach in 2010 In June of 2010, a large healthcare system was informed by its business associate that a breach had occurred, affecting thousands of patients at its hospital. The breach had occurred the previous month when an employee of the business...
New Hampshire HIO Hits the Ground Running After years of collaboration and planning, New Hampshire has announced the launch of its Health Information Organization, the NH-HIO, developed with the help of the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services Office of Health...
Uncertainty in Federal Budget Prompts Kansas to Return .5M Early Innovator Grant On Tuesday, August 9th, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback announced that Kansas would be returning $31.5M in federal grant money awarded to it from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). There is...
Spartanburg Breach Affects 400,000…But They’re Not Telling According to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) webpage listing breaches of PHI over 500, a theft affecting an originally unreleased number of patients turned out to have impacted approximately 4,000 patients…times 100. You’d...
HITPC Releases Tiger Team EHR Amendment/Correction Recommendations The ONC Health Information Technology Policy Committee (HITPC) released the Privacy & Security Tiger Team (Tiger Team) recommendations concerning amendments and corrections to electronic medical records (EMRs) in a...
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HHS Announces Proposed Rules for Health Insurance Exchanges In a Press Release posted yesterday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a framework to assist states in building Affordable Insurance Exchanges, state-based competitive marketplaces where...
UCLAHS Settles Potential HIPAA Violations The HHS OCR has announced its settlement with the University of California Los Angeles Health System (UCLAHS) for potential violations of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules. The settlement and resulting Resolution Agreement resolved two...
Doctor Faces Criminal Charges for Wrongful Disclosures under “False Pretenses” Tripping on the heels of the HIPAA criminal charges against Chelsea Catherine Stewart for theft of patient information, (see my previous post on June 14, 2011), a physician was indicted June 21, 2011 on three...