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Last week, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced a settlement with Lafourche Medical Group (“LMG”), a Louisiana medical group, for a 2021 phishing attack and breach that affected the protected health information (“PHI”) of 34,862 individuals. In addition to paying $480,000 to OCR, LMG agreed to a corrective action plan that will include implementing security measures to protect electronic PHI, developing written policies and procedures to comply with HIPAA rules, and training staff members.Continue Reading OCR Takes Enforcement Action for Phishing Attack

Last week, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) issued two pieces of guidance on the privacy and security of protected health information (“PHI”) when using telehealth services. One of the documents is intended to help health care providers explain to patients, in plain language, the privacy and security risks of using remote communication technologies for telehealth (the “Provider Telehealth Guidance”). The other provides tips to patients on how to safeguard their PHI when using video apps and other technologies for telehealth (the “Patient Telehealth Guidance”).Continue Reading OCR Issues Guidance to Providers and Patients on Telehealth Privacy and Security

The HHS Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) closed out the month of April with some updates to HIPAA civil monetary penalty (“CMP”) limits and clarifications to OCR’s stance on the Privacy Rule’s application to transfers of electronic protected health information (“ePHI”) to third-party applications and application programming interfaces (“APIs”).

Differential CMP Caps Based on Enforcement Discretion

Under the current HIPAA Enforcement Rule, HHS employs a four-tier level of culpability scale in line with the HITECH Act. These four tiers correspond to appropriate CMPs ranges for violations by covered entities and business associates of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules. These penalty tiers are adjusted for inflation pursuant to the cost-of-living formula set forth in the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015.

For instance, if a person did not know and, by exercising reasonable diligence, would not have known that the person violated the applicable HIPAA provision, the CMP range the person could be levied was $100-$50,000 for each identical violation, up to a maximum of $1.5 million for all such violations annually (before adjusted for inflation). The $1.5 million annual cap on CMPs for HIPAA violations applied across all four tiers, even though the minimum penalties for each tier increased in amount.

Since HHS began using this four-tier structure, however, there has been debate about whether the HITECH Act mandates different annual CMP caps for each of the tiers. OCR’s April 30, 2019 Federal Register Notice changes HHS’s prior position on this, and now imposes the following annual caps on CMPs for HIPAA violations:.Continue Reading HIPAA Spring Cleaning! Tidying Up Penalty Limits and FAQs on Patients’ Right of Access

The HHS Office of Civil Rights published a new FAQ response (OCR FAQ) detailing the agency’s position that generally information blocking will violate the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules if it affects a covered entity’s access to its own protected health information (PHI) or its ability to respond to requests for access to PHI from patients. This follows a series of similar policy documents from HHS over the past 18 months that focus on preventing business arrangements or practices that would be defined as information blocking, and thereby, frustrating the goal of interoperability. Specifically, according to the OCR FAQ:

  • An electronic health records (EHR) vendor or cloud provider’s actions to terminate a covered entity’s access to its own electronic PHI (ePHI) (e.g., in a payment dispute) would violate the HIPAA Privacy Rule because those actions would constitute an impermissible use of PHI.
  • An EHR vendor or cloud provider’s refusal to ensure the accessibility and usability of a covered entity’s ePHI upon demand by the covered entity or to return a covered entity’s ePHI upon termination of the agreement, in the form and format that is reasonable in light of the agreement, would violate the HIPAA Security Rule.
  • A business associate may not deny a covered entity access to the PHI the business associate maintains on behalf of the covered entity if necessary to provide individuals with access to their PHI under the HIPAA Privacy Rule.
  • A covered entity that agrees to terms within a business associate agreement (BAA) that would prevent the covered entity from ensuring the availability of its own PHI as required would not be in compliance with the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules.

OCR has increasingly ramped up its enforcement of violations of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules related to noncompliant BAAs, so the new OCR FAQ signals that information blocking provisions could be the source of future enforcement actions.Continue Reading Blocking Access to Health Information May Violate HIPAA

On January 7, 2016, the HHS Office for Civil Rights released guidance on individuals’ right to access health information under the HIPAA Privacy Rule. The guidance clarifies areas of confusion and non-compliance by covered entities and business associates, particularly in light of the proliferation of electronic health records and electronic health information. Areas of emphasis …

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced in an April 22, 2014, press release that two separate entities—Concentra Health Services (“Concentra”) and QCA Health Plan, Inc. (“QCA”)—collectively have paid almost $2 million to resolve potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996…