HHS’ Office for Civil Rights will not impose penalties for potential HIPAA violations of healthcare providers and their business associates who use online or web-based scheduling applications to coordinate COVID-19 vaccine appointments. Five Details ONE: OCR on Jan. 19 announced its enforcement discretion, which is effective immediately and has a retroactive date of Dec. 11, 2020. TWO: The enforcement discretion aims to help speed up the vaccination process for HIPAA-covered entities, which must quickly schedule […]

This landmark law imposes stringent privacy and security mandates on health care providers—and most of their IT vendors. HIPAA summary: What is HIPAA? HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a law passed in 1996 that transformed many of the ways in which the healthcare industry operated in the United States. The law had many important and far-reaching effects, but from the perspective of IT pros, its most important provisions are mandates that […]