Long Term Care & Senior Living Blog

Based on reports that HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell appointed Joceyln Samuels to replace Leon Rodriguez, it appears Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has the new leadership it has been awaiting. With this new leadership at the helm, can HIPAA audits be far off? Probably not.

Today, the HHS Press office released notice of a settlement of $800,000 with Parkview Health System, Inc. (Parkview) for potential HIPAA violations. This settlement relates to a complaint going back to September 2008, when Parkview received between 5,000-8,000 patient records from a retiring physician. Parkview received the medical records as part of the physician’s transition to retirement, while Parkview decided whether to purchase some of the physician’s practice.

While the donation of a valuable item such as an EHR program would raise fraud and abuse concerns, exemptions under Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Safe Harbor were designed to encourage the widespread implementation of EHR and to let smaller providers accept gifts of EHR software without violating the law or statute.

Adult & Pediatric Dermatology, P.C., of Concord, Mass., (APDerm) has agreed to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules with the Department of Health and Human Services, agreeing to a $150,000 payment. APDerm will also be required to implement a corrective action plan to correct deficiencies in its HIPAA compliance program. APDerm is a private practice that delivers dermatology services in four locations in Massachusetts and two in New Hampshire. This case marks the first settlement with a covered entity for not having policies and procedures in place to address the breach notification provisions of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, passed as part of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).