By Matt Fisher – The drumbeat of settlement agreements for alleged HIPAA violations by the Office for Civil Rights is continuing along with the consistent finding that the required risk analysis did not occur. The consistent announcement of settlements offers regular reminders to the healthcare industry that OCR is watching and expecting compliance to improve.
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By Matt Fisher – Imagine this scenario: an individual is suffering from substance use disorder and decides to seek help. A big reason for not getting treatment is reportedly not knowing how or where to get treatment, not being able to afford the treatment, and/or not finding a program or clinician where they wanted to be able to go.
By Matt Fisher – The risk to privacy and security of healthcare information, despite all of the headlines, does not only come from outside attackers. Inside threats are real and can go undetected for potentially longer periods of time.
By Matt Fisher – The steady stream of settlements from the Office for Civil Rights continues. The underpinning to many of the recent settlements is notification following the occurrence of a data breach, often from some form of a cyber attack.
By Matt Fisher – Ambient listening technology is growing in many areas and being incorporated into a lot of different applications. What does the ambient listening do? It automatically picks up conversations and other sounds around it to be processed for one purpose or another.
By Matt Fisher – Apparently the Office for Civil Rights does still have older resolved HIPAA concerns in its hopper to release. The latest release about a civil monetary penalty continues the ongoing enforcement focus on the right of access.
By Matt Fisher – The Office for Civil Rights announced another cyber incident driven HIPAA civil monetary penalty on February 20, 2025. The settlement broke a one month lull in HIPAA enforcement announcements, though looking at the dates in the documents (all go back to the last quarter or so of 2024), it may not necessarily be an indication that enforcement of HIPAA remains an ongoing immediate priority.
By Matt Fisher – Artificial intelligence has been the subject of no shortage of hype about its capabilities. As AI has evolved in the past few years it has often been touted as the force that will finally drive major changes in healthcare.
By Matt Fisher – Prior to the changeover of the administration, the HHS Office for Civil Rights went on a bit of a HIPAA settlement bender. The fast pace of announced settlements felt a bit like a clearing of the decks. The various settlements continued recent trends around the issues being selected by OCR for settlement along with the still random amount of settlements.