Archive of posts about HIPAA privacy training by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a privacy awareness and security training company.
Here’s a cartoon on HIPAA and social media use to jump start your week. You can’t think enough about HIPAA these days. HIPAA audits are back, and OCR is having a vigorous enforcement year this year, something I plan to post about soon.
HIPAA is famously impenetrable, with so many special terms and definitions. I wrote this cartoon to capture the wonderful world of HIPAA jargon, which I hope fellow lovers of HIPAA can appreciate. I have another HIPAA cartoon here.
A Not-So-Far-Fetched Seinfeld Episode In a Seinfeld episode called “The Package” from 1996 (click here to see the scene), airing just months after HIPAA was passed, Elaine goes to see a doctor for a rash.
Recently, HIPAA celebrated its 20th birthday. HHS issued a celebratory blog post. HIPAA is 20 years old if you start counting from the date the statute was passed (1996). If we measure HIPAA’s age from the date that the HIPAA Privacy Rule became effective (2003), then HIPAA is 13. So HIPAA could be 20 years […]
As ransomware escalates and poses serious security risks for healthcare institutions, many privacy experts and legislators have called for more specific guidance from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). A few weeks ago, HHS responded to these calls with a detailed fact sheet to explain ransomware and provide advice. Although most of […]
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).
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 […]
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 […]