The CMS EHR Incentive Program 2014 attestation deadlines for Medicare-eligible hospitals and professionals draw near (November 30 and December 31, respectively), so MRB asked healthcare professionals to reflect upon their successes and struggles associated with EHR implementation for benchmark survey.
1. Phase 2 of OCR's HIPAA audits will be desk audits, which means OCR will not conduct on-site audits of covered entities (CE) and business associates (BA) unless resources are available.
In the wake of several large breaches, OCR is ready to ramp up its oversight of HIPAA compliance as it embarks upon Phase 2 of its HIPAA privacy, security, and breach notification audits. OCR began preparing for this round of audits around the same time that news broke of the second-largest HIPAA breach in the U.S., a hacking incident that affected 4.5 million patients treated at or referred to Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, Inc.
The September 22, 2014, deadline to revise business associate agreements (BAA) may have seemed like a date far in the future when the HIPAA omnibus final rule was released January 25, 2013. However, this compliance date is now in our rearview mirror as we continue to move along the road toward establishing and maintaining compliance with the HIPAA Privacy Rule and Security Rule.
