Large Provider Revises Patient Contact Process to Reflect Requests for Confidential Communications
Large Provider Revises Patient Contact Process to Reflect Requests for Confidential Communications
Covered Entity: General Hospital
Issue: Impermissible Disclosure; Confidential Communications
A patient alleged that a general hospital disclosed protected health
information when a hospital staff person left a message on the
patient’s home phone answering machine, thereby failing to accommodate
the patient’s request that communications of PHI be made only through
her mobile or work phones. In response, the hospital instituted a
number of actions to achieve compliance with the Privacy Rule. To
resolve this matter to the satisfaction of OCR, the hospital: retrained
an entire Department with regard to the requirements of the Privacy
Rule; provided additional specific training to staff members whose job
duties included leaving messages for patients; and, revised the
Department’s patient privacy policy to clarify patient rights to
accommodation of reasonable requests to receive communications of PHI by
alternative means or at alternative locations.
| Enforcement Results as of September 30, 2022 Since the compliance date of the Privacy Rule in April 2003, OCR has received over 309,475 HIPAA complaints and has initiated over 1,053 compliance reviews. We have resolved ninety-seven percent of these cases (300,427). OCR has investigated and resolved over 29,779 cases by requiring changes in privacy practices and corrective actions by, or providing technical assistance to, HIPAA covered entities and their business associates. Corrective actions obtained by OCR from these entities have resulted in change that is systemic and that affects all the individuals they serve. OCR has successfully enforced the ...read more |
| Large Medicaid Plan Corrects Vulnerability that Resulted in Disclosure to Non-BA Vendors Covered Entity: Health Plans Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures; Safeguards A municipal social service agency disclosed protected health information while processing Medicaid applications by sending consolidated data to computer vendors that were not business associates. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, OCR required that the social service agency develop procedures for properly disclosing protected health information only to its valid business associates and to train its staff on the new processes. The new procedures were instituted in Medicaid offices and independent ...read more |
| Issued by: Office for Civil Rights (OCR) What if a HIPAA covered entity (or business associate) uses a CSP to maintain ePHI without first executing a business associate agreement with that CSP? Answer: If a covered entity (or business associate) uses a CSP to maintain (e.g., to process or store) electronic protected health information (ePHI) without entering into a BAA with the CSP, the covered entity (or business associate) is in violation of the HIPAA Rules. 45 C.F.R §§164.308(b)(1) and §164.502(e). OCR has entered into a resolution agreement and corrective action plan with a covered entity that OCR determined ...read more |
| Private Practice Revises Policies and Procedures Addressing Activities Preparatory to Research Covered Entity: Private Practice Issue: Impermissible Disclosure-Research A private practice physician who was the principal investigator of a clinical research study disclosed a list of patients and diagnostic codes to a contract research organization to telephone patients for recruitment purposes. The disclosure was not consistent with documents approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The private practice maintained that the disclosure to the contract research organization was permissible as a review preparatory to research. Activities considered “preparatory to research” include: preparing a research protocol; developing a research hypothesis; ...read more |
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