Home Health & Hospice Week

Patient privacy and security remain challenges for healthcare providers and their staffs with the evolving risks and challenges. The HHS Office for Civil Rights wants to help.

New HHS-OCR guidance addresses common issues created by the HIPAA Privacy and Security rules and their impacts on health IT. The materials available on the Health.IT.gov site include "Privacy Rule guidance documents as part of a Privacy and Security Toolkit to implement The Nationwide Privacy and Security Framework for Electronic Exchange of Individually Identifiable Health Information (Privacy and Security Framework)," noted the online resource.

The HHS-OCR hopes the tools "facilitate the electronic exchange of health information" related to privacy as well as give "HIPAA-covered entities insight into the Security Rule and assistance with implementation of the security standards," it explained. Some highlights of the new guidance include: "Openness and Transparency Principle and FAQs; Security 101 for Covered Entities; and Security Standards: Implementation for the Small Provider."

To look at the new HHS-OCR offerings and more advice from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), visit www.healthit.gov/policy-researchersimplementers/hipaa-and-health-it.