Tagged: Office for Civil Rights

2020’s a Bust, but HIPAA Enforcement Is on a Roll!

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been actively enforcing HIPAA regulations this year, including a series of seven settlements under OCR’s Right of Access Initiative to enforce patients’ rights to timely access their medical records at a reasonable cost. This year, OCR has recorded...

HIPAA and COVID-19 Updates: The Office for Civil Rights Provides Additional Guidance on Permitted Disclosures to First Responders

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, many health care providers have had a myriad of HIPAA questions, including questions about whether they can share some types of information and, if so, the type of information they can share with first responders who may have been exposed. Today, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) published guidance outlining the...

New HIPAA Waivers for Health Care Providers During the COVID-19 Emergency

This post provides an update on a number of HIPAA waivers that have just been made available to health care providers: (1) Waivers for hospitals in the initial 72 hours of enacting a disaster protocol; and (2) Waivers for all health care providers to allow them to use “everyday communications technologies, such as FaceTime or...

How HHS’s New Division in the Office for Civil Rights Will Enforce Rights of Conscience and Religious Freedom

    When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) announced a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division in the HHS Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”), it framed a problem and a solution. The press release stated that “fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious freedom” are not being fully enforced on...