The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reached a settlement with Bayfront Health St. Petersburg, a Florida hospital, for allegedly violating the HIPAA Privacy Rule’s right of access provision when it failed to give a mother timely access to her unborn child’s records, according to an OCR press release.
Q: I work for a small rural hospital, and we have a lot of budget limitations for technology upgrades. Can we allow clinical staff to use their personal cell phones and mobile devices to communicate with patients? If so, how can we keep our calls, email, and text messages HIPAA compliant?
Patients are getting emboldened in the digital age and want quicker, more efficient—immediate, really—access to medical records. Further, the government is reinforcing existing regulations and creating new rules around data sharing that require entities to make healthcare records more accessible and deliver records to patients in their desired electronic format. Technology innovation has made this much easier for healthcare facilities to accomplish.
HHS wants to update confidentiality rules that govern the medical records of substance use disorder patients, according to a proposed rule released August 22.
