Written in collaboration with Melissa Chaplik, JD Candidate 2024 Dentists take note: HIPAA most likely applies to your practice (and it has for the last 20 years).[i] Doing things like blasting a patient in response to a negative review on-line, using patient data for a political campaign, and ignoring correspondence from regulators is bad (i.e., […]
On December 15, 2022, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced its 17th HIPAA Right of Access settlement of the year. Overall, OCR has settled or assessed a penalty in a Right of Access enforcement matter 42 times since it began its Right of Access enforcement initiative in 2019. […]
No one likes receiving negative reviews on Yelp. But healthcare providers need to exercise better restraint than a dentist who will pay $23,000 to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to settle claims that his responsive posts violated HIPAA. OCR received a complaint that New Vision Dental (NVD) continuously […]
(Revised 1/6/2023; 1/23/2023 – The CT HIE, known as Connie, is new and many aspects of its operations are still in flux. Further, the information I provide is only as good as the information I receive. As I gather new information that contradicts or clarifies old information, I will update this article.) Connecticut is the […]
On November 28, 2022, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued proposed changes to regulations implementing amendments Congress made in 2020 to the confidentiality of substance use disorder (SUD) records law. These long-awaited (and overdue) proposals paint an important picture of things to come, especially with respect to enforcement. Below are three key […]
Effective July 1, 2022, Connecticut’s Reproductive Freedom Act (PA 22-19) expands access to abortion, enhances protections for reproductive healthcare records and provides protections to abortion providers and patients receiving abortion care in the state. Connecticut was the first state to pass such legislation after news of the Dobbs decision leaked. Massachusetts and California followed suit. This […]
Today, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced three more HIPAA Right of Access enforcement resolutions – all against dentists. And the story is largely the same: patients requested records and did not timely or properly receive those records. In one instance, the dental practice significantly overcharged for records. […]
Last week, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reminded us of the importance of the basics when it comes to protecting patient information. On August 23rd, it announced a HIPAA enforcement action involving tangible protected health information (PHI) that a practice tossed out with the rest of the trash. For over a decade, PHI in […]
Protecting personal information is important to all Americans. In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law (the US is one of the few remaining countries without one), states are stepping up. Five states have adopted comprehensive privacy legislation: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and Utah. And more than half of the country’s state legislatures have […]
Human subjects research plays an important role in many of the medical and social advancements we enjoy today, but as a result of the horrifying and unethical experiments of the past (e.g., Nazi experiments, Tuskegee Syphilis study, Willowbrook State School experiments) human subjects research is now highly regulated and closely monitored. Federal regulations require that […]