The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced its seventh HIPAA violation settlement of 2017, putting the agency well on its way to topping last year’s record-setting number of HIPAA settlements.
The Center for Children’s Digestive Health (CCDH), an Illinois clinic group, dished out $31,000 in a HIPAA settlement with HHS due to a lack of a business associate agreement (BAA) with a vendor, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced April 20.
Metro Community Provider Network (MCPN), a federally-qualified health center (FQHC) in Denver, agreed to a $400,000 HIPAA breach settlement and corrective action plan.
Q: A physician’s office called our office about a mutual patient to inquire the date the patient was last seen in our office for Medicare billing purposes. How are we supposed to know that they are in fact who they have identified themselves as? Are we allowed to provide this information without the patient adding this physician office to the disclosure form?
Q: The parents of a child at our pediatric clinic are divorced and the child is a beneficiary of one parent’s insurance. That parent wishes to restrict information the other has access to. However, because the parents have joint custody, the child may be brought in by either parent. Is there anything in HIPAA that could support denying the request or that would require us to comply?
The use of electronic health records (EHR) should be guided by ethical principles that put patient care at the forefront, according to a position paper published by the American College of Physicians (ACP). EHRs can be an asset in delivery quality care, but may have unintended ethical consequences, the ACP said in a March 21 statement.
Q: Can we ask patients to submit a signed document stating who their personal representative(s) is/are? Can a patient have more than one personal representative?
