Just over a week ago, a federal district court invalidated part of HHS’s 2016 guidance on the fees a covered entity can charge for patient records. The court found that HHS exceeded its authority when it declared that only a limited fee could be charged for records sent to a third party at a patient’s direction.
Category Archives: HIPAA
It appears that the 2019 HIPAA enforcement year is over with a lot less fanfare (and cash) than last year but it did provide important insights into enforcement trends. *Distributed by Law360 on January 22, 2020 and included in its Health Law and Cybersecurity and Privacy Law. newsletters.
It appears that the 2019 HIPAA enforcement year is over with a lot less fanfare (and cash) than last year. The total in settlements and penalties for 2019 is $12.2 million, which is substantially less than OCR’s highest ever total of $28.7 million just one year ago.
Earlier this year, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a Right of Access Enforcement Initiative, which would focus on ensuring that patients were getting timely access to their records without being overcharged. Prior to this announcement, enforcement actions against providers for denying a patient the proper right of access were rare. Since announcing the initiative, OCR has swiftly pursued claims resulting in two settlements within months of each other.