A recent study of 51 healthcare providers and 3,003 institutions, published last week on the medRXiv website, revealed widespread noncompliance with HIPAA requirements regarding patients’ right of access to their own medical records. The study was conducted on behalf of Ciitizen Corporation, a medical records storage platform for patients.

The researchers sent record requests to

On June 6, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Request for Information (RFI) regarding its Patients over Paperwork Initiative. CMS is seeking public input on ways to reduce administrative and regulatory burdens on healthcare providers, with an overall goal of reducing healthcare costs and increasing the time providers spend with their

Rivkin Radler’s Eric Fader and Margarita Christoforou edited the “Health Care Privacy and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996” chapter in the June 2019 edition of the Thomson Reuters Data Security and Privacy Law treatise. Eric has edited this chapter of the treatise since its 2014 edition.

New material in this year’s

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on May 23 that Medical Informatics Engineering, Incorporated (MIE), an Indiana-based online electronic health records company, had agreed to pay HHS’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) $100,000 to settle HIPAA violations. MIE’s April 23 Resolution Agreement with HHS also provided for the company to enter

Touchstone Medical Imaging has agreed to pay $3 million to settle HIPAA violations after an unsecured computer server exposed the medical records of 300,000 patients on Google in 2014. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the settlement on May 6. Touchstone, based in Franklin, Tennessee, provides diagnostic imaging services in Nebraska,

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently issued five new FAQs pertaining to software applications that obtain individuals’ electronic protected health information (ePHI). The FAQs describe various scenarios in which HIPAA covered entities may transmit ePHI to apps, including fitness trackers and other wearables.

In short, a covered entity

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has revised the potential monetary penalties that may be imposed on healthcare providers, health plans and business associates for HIPAA violations. HHS’s notice of enforcement discretion, issued on April 26, reduces the maximum annual penalty for less-severe violations from $1.5 million to as low as $25,000.

The

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently issued its first-ever recommendations on how digital health interventions may be used to improve health systems and patient care. Digital communication technologies covered by the report include apps, SMS text messages, and interactive voice response, and may involve the use of mobile devices, tablets, and desktop computers.

The guidance

Amazon announced in a blog post on April 4 that its Alexa voice assistant’s operating environment now complies with HIPAA. Companies that build functions, or skills, for Alexa will now be able to create skills that involve the transmission of users’ protected health information.

The initial group of six participants in an invitation-only program includes

Researchers at the Ben-Gurion University Cyber Security Research Center in Israel have created malware that could exploit vulnerabilities in MRI and CT scanning equipment to alter patients’ images. The Washington Post discussed the research project in an April 3 article.

In theory, by adding fabricated cancerous nodules to a MRI or CT scan, an attacker