The prospects for passing a U.S. privacy law will improve under the Biden administration, predicts attorney Kirk Nahra, who offers a legislative outlook.
In a ruling that could have a profound impact on HIPAA enforcement, a U.S. Court of Appeals has vacated a $4.3 million HIPAA civil monetary penalty levied by federal regulators against the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in the wake of three breaches involving unencrypted mobile devices.
The Department of Health and Human Services has slapped Excellus Health Plan with a $5.1 million settlement in the wake of a 2015 data breach that affected more than 9.3 million individuals.
Hacking incidents, including ransomware and phishing attacks, as well as security incidents involving vendors dominated the federal tally of major health data breaches in 2020.
As federal regulators intensify their focus on compliance with requirements to provide patients with access to their health information, healthcare organizations need to sort through a variety of emerging challenges, says health information management and privacy expert Rita Bowen.
The growth in the use of telehealth during the COVID-19 crisis means that healthcare providers must carefully reassess and bolster the security of the connected devices, applications and systems used, says Kelly Rozumalski of the consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton.
In the year ahead, healthcare organizations must be prepared to face an assortment of advancing security threats, including those that damage the integrity of critical patient data, says Rod Piechowski of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
The COVID-19 pandemic has spotlighted an array of evolving patient privacy issues that legislators and regulators will need to address in the year ahead, say government policy experts Mari Savickis and Cassie Leonard of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.
Under legislation passed by Congress this weekend that awaits President Trump's signature, HIPAA enforcers, when considering financial penalties for compliance violations, would need to determine whether an organization had implemented "recognized security practices," such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
A recent data breach at a Colorado-based mental health clinic that exposed data on nearly 300,000 individuals is the latest of several in the mental health sector this year.
The Department of Health and Human Services last week issued its 10th settlement involving a HIPAA "right of access" case since launching its patient records access initiative last year. But how might HIPAA enforcement priorities at HHS' Office for Civil Rights change under a Biden administration?
In the latest health data breach enforcement action by a state, New Jersey regulators have slapped a supermarket cooperative with a large settlement for improper disposal of customer pharmacy information.
Despite the soaring list of customers reporting data breaches tied to the May ransomware attack on Blackbaud - and numerous legal actions filed against the company - the fundraising software vendor recently told Wall Street that it expects cyber insurance to cover the bulk of its costs associated with the incident.
Federal regulators have slapped health insurer Aetna with a $1 million HIPAA settlement for three 2017 breaches - including a mailing incident that exposed HIV information - that occurred within six months.
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