The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a Confidentiality, Privacy, and Security Workgroup, also known as the American Health Information Community, that is made up of practitioners, IT folks, lawyers and other leaders outside of the government who want a say in how protected health information (PHI) is safeguarded, shared, and otherwise handled.
Posts Tagged ‘OCR’
HIPAA: Advisory Workgroup Proposes PHI Security and Privacy Requirements Should Apply to All Organizations
Monday, April 23rd, 2007Admitted HIPAA Noncompliance at UPMC: Penalties Must Be Applied to Make Laws Effective
Monday, April 16th, 2007On April 13 the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) admitted to using the records of 80 patients, including names and Social Security numbers, for a presentation they made at a 2002 symposium, in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
HIPAA Security Rule and Privacy Rule Enforcement Reportedly Going To Be Pursued In 2007
Monday, April 9th, 2007Something that has bothered me, and many others, for a very long time is how there have been absolutely no enforcement actions for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule or security rule since they went into effect. Passing a law and then not doing anything to enforce it, even after the enforcement agencies have received tens of thousands of complaints reporting noncompliance, makes the law weak and prone to disregard by covered entities (CEs) who see others getting away with noncompliance with just a, “Whoops! Sorry, we’ll try to fix that.”
HIPAA: Report Shows Most Complaints Not Investigated
Monday, December 18th, 2006Government Health IT published an interesting report today, “Most privacy complaints are not investigated.”
From the article:
“The Department of Health and Human Services investigated less than 25 percent of 22,964 privacy complaints submitted to HHS‚Äô Office for Civil Rights (OCR) from April 2003 through September 2006”
How the HIPAA Enforcement Rule Impacts the Compliance Efforts of Covered Entities
Wednesday, August 16th, 2006In this episode, I speak with two highly experienced HIPAA compliance experts, Kevin Beaver and Brad Smith to get their views and opinions about this much discussed but often debated regulation. In particular we discuss the relatively new HIPAA Administrative Simplification Enforcement Final Rule, and how it impacts providers and payers. We explore and try to determine what, if any, impact the HIPAA Enforcement Rule has on Covered Entities.
Instead of clarifying compliance enforcement issues for covered entities (CEs), the Enforcement Rule has seemed to confuse and mislead many CEs into believing that they really don’t need to do much with regard to HIPAA compliance unless the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) come knocking at their door and tell them they specifically need to do something.
Not all CEs are lackadaisical, though; Kevin, Brad and I discuss some of the CEs that have been very diligent in their HIPAA compliance efforts. However, we also discuss some examples of blatent disregard for HIPAA, and the resulting risks to organizations from such action. We also discuss the importance of addressing compliance through partnering information security, privacy, legal and compliance areas.
