Recently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued its first HIPAA resolution agreement and monetary penalty against a business associate (BA).
HIPAA’s Long Arm — and Why It’s a Good Thing
Category: Training: HIPAA
Posts about HIPAA training topics by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a company that provides HIPAA training.
6 Reasons to Visit the TeachPrivacy Booth at the IAPP Summit 2016
Please stop by the TeachPrivacy booth at the expo at the IAPP Summit. 1. Play our new game. See if you can spot all the privacy and data security risks in this scene. Pick up a copy of the scene, see our poster, and try out our interactive module.
New Privacy and Security Awareness Training Programs
I created some new training programs last year, and here are some of the highlights: The Ransomware Attack (~5 mins) This short program (~5 minutes) consists of an interactive cartoon vignette about malware. The program is highly interactive, and trainees engage with a scenario involving ransomware. Although this program involves ransomware, the lessons it teaches […]
3 Types of Incidents Account for 86% of HIPAA Data Breaches
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 […]
Is HIPAA Enforcement Too Lax?
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 […]
The Value of HIPAA Training
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 […]
Blogging Highlights 2015: Health Privacy+Security Issues
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
Lessons from the Latest HIPAA Enforcement Action
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 […]
Patient Access to Medical Records Under HIPAA: Significant Reform Needed
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 […]
HIPAA’s Friends and Family Network: Access to Health Information
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 […]