Posts about HIPAA by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a privacy awareness and security training company.
A new report by Verizon, the PHI Data Breach report, analyzes 1,931 data breaches of protected health information (PHI) under HIPAA, The incidents occurred between 1994 and 2014, with most occurring from 2004-2014. An article from Computer World sums up the findings of the report. One interesting statistic is that 392 million PHI records were […]
By Daniel J. Solove ProPublica has been running a series of lengthy articles about HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) enforcement that are worth reading. A Sustained and Vigorous Critique of OCR HIPAA Enforcement A ProPublica article from early in 2015 noted that HIPAA fines were quite rare. The article noted that from 2009 through […]
HIPAA expert Rebecca Herold offers a very compelling explanation of the value of HIPAA training. She writes: Information security and privacy education is more important than ever because new gadgets and technologies enable more healthcare workers to collect and share data. In September 2015, Cancer Care Group agreed to settle HIPAA violations by paying a […]
I’ve been going through my blog posts from 2015 to find the ones I most want to highlight. Here are some selected posts about health privacy and security: Why HIPAA Matters: Medical ID Theft and the Human Cost of Health Privacy and Security Incidents
By Daniel J. Solove Whenever I go to a doctor and am asked what I do for a living, I say that I focus on information privacy law. “HIPAA?” the doctors will ask. “Yes, HIPAA,” I confess. And then the doctor’s face turns grim. At first, it looks like the face of a doctor about […]
by Daniel J. Solove Recently, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) publicized its resolution agreement in its HIPAA enforcement action against St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center (SEMC). SEMC agreed to pay $218,000. The case began with a complaint filed with OCR back in 2012 that employees […]
by Daniel J. Solove Recently, I wrote about the challenges in accessing health information about family members. In this post, I will explore patients’ access to their own medical records. HIPAA doesn’t handle patient access to medical records very well. There are many misunderstandings about patient access under HIPAA that make it quite difficult for […]
by Daniel J. Solove Suppose your elderly mother is being treated at the hospital for a heart condition. Your mother tells her doctor that you can have access to her health information. The doctor, however, doesn’t disclose the information to you. The doctor thinks that you can only have the information with a signed written […]
by Daniel J. Solove There is a great quote in this article from HealthcareInfoSecurity: that expresses very well the importance and goals of HIPAA training programs: Workforce training is important not only for preventing breaches, including those involving ID crimes, but also to help detect those incidents, [Ann Patterson of the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance] says. […]
by Daniel J. Solove I recently created a new resource page for the TeachPrivacy website: HIPAA Training Requirements: FAQ.