The first thing you should know about HIPAA is that it’s HIPAA, not HIPPA. There is only one P, and that P doesn’t stand for “privacy.” “People make up what that acronym stands for,” Deven McGraw, co-founder and chief regulatory officer of the medical records platform Ciitizen and former deputy director for health information privacy at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR), told Recode. “More often than not, […]

The mission of why healthcare exists is to heal and restore health, but that can be difficult to accomplish if the built environment is not designed with security in mind. A safe environment is a major contributor to healing, yet violence generated by patients and visitors is increasing at astonishing rates. Improving security and safety in healthcare begins with design. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while under 20% of all workplace injuries happen […]

Hospitals are the most common violators of HIPAA privacy regulations, followed by private practices, outpatient facilities, pharmacies and health plans, according to a March 3 report from the American Medical Association. HHS’ Office for Civil Rights, which is responsible for enforcing HIPAA privacy rules, regularly tracks the compliance issues most often alleged in HIPAA complaints. The five most common HIPAA compliance issues, as compiled by the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights: Impermissible uses and disclosures […]

The $65,000 settlement with Arbour Hospital is the seventeenth made by OCR under its HIPAA Right of Access Initiative, an agency compliance priority. The Department of Health and Human Services announced it reached a $65,000 settlement with Massachusetts-based Arbour Hospital, which resolved potential violations of the HIPAA right of access standard. It’s the seventeenth enforcement action taken under the OCR’s Right of Access Initiative. Launched in 2019 as an agency enforcement priorit, the effort is designed […]

The deadly gunfire that erupted at a Minnesota medical clinic earlier this month sharpened the pangs of a Louisiana man’s grief even as it hardened his resolve to better protect health care workers from workplace violence. Gene Sausse owns a small business in New Orleans. He’s also the brother of a nurse who died almost two years ago in Baton Rouge from injuries sustained on the job. When a patient attacked another nurse, Lynne Sausse […]

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA is a challenging Act for thousands of companies in the United States. It sets the standard for sensitive patient data protection in the country. If your organization deals with sensitive healthcare data, ensuring HIPAA compliance is vital. In December 2020, the HHS had found organizations non-compliant with HIPAA in 69% of its investigations. So, even though compliance with the Act is time-consuming, it is also vital. […]

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 […]