Home Health & Hospice Week
CMS To Expand HIPAA Enforcement
• Get ready to pay more attention to your HIPAA compliance. A new proposed rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services "adopts provisions designed to strengthen and expand HIPAA's enforcement provisions," CMS notes in a release. "This proposed rule strengthens the privacy and security of health information," Georgina Verdugo, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), says in a release. OCR administers and enforces the HIPAA rules. The regulation proposed in the July 14 Federal Register is based on the HITECH Act portion of the health care reform legislation passed earlier this year. Much of the HITECH Act's wallop for home care providers is in the new breach notification requirements, however, which have been the subject of previous rulemaking (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XIX, No. 1, p. 3). OCR is keeping on providers about the breach notification issue. The HITECH Act requires HHS to post breaches of unsecured protected health information for more than 500 individuals. Now OCR has updated its breach notification website to include brief summaries of the cases OCR has investigated, the names of those reporting breaches -- including private practices -- and an easier way to search for breaches. Resources: The breach site is at www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/breachnotificationrule/breachtool.html. The proposed rule is at
Home Health & Hospice Week
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