On December 20, 2010, the U.S. federal government published “Part II: Regulatory Information Service Center: Introduction to The Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.”  If you are a healthcare Covered Entity (CE), Business Associate (BA) or BA subcontractor, as defined under HIPAA and HITECH, this should be of interest to you.  Why?  Because within it is the long-awaited Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) timeline for when they would publish the final rule of the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) that came out in July, 2010.  The date?  Well, (more…)