Health Law Checkup

HHS Seeks Public Comment on the HIPAA Privacy Rule

Earlier today the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (HHS OCR) issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking public input on the HIPAA Privacy Rule. Specifically, HHS OCR is interested in how the HIPAA Privacy Rule could be modified to further Secretary Azar’s goal of promoting coordinated, value-based health care […]

| 2 min read
AS
Former Associate

Required Reporting of Privileged Information

Arizona physicians must report to the Medical Board “any information that appears to show that a doctor of medicine is or may be medically incompetent, is or may be guilty of unprofessional conduct or is or may be mentally or physically unable to safely engage in the practice of medicine.”   A.R.S. § 32-1451(A).  In fact, […]

| 3 min read
AS
Former Associate

(Un)Protected Health Information Held for Ransom

Recent experiences of major health care companies offer a reminder of the importance of data security and following a well-written policy for compliance with the HIPAA Privacy Rule. Lithuanian police reported on Tuesday that a hacking group had illegally obtained and published over 25,000 private photos and personal data from a chain of European plastic […]

| 2 min read
AS
Former Associate

HIPAA and the Cloud’s Shared Responsibility Models

Cloud-based service providers (CSPs), like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, offer online access to shared computing resources. As such, they have developed a “shared responsibility model” for how CSPs and companies that use their cloud services will share responsibilities when it comes to ensuring security in the cloud. A lot of companies believe that, […]

| 3 min read
EK