Home Health & Hospice Week

Watch out for yet another scam to swipe your patients’ private info. An individual posing as an HHS Office for Civil Rights investigator has contacted HIPAA-covered entities in an attempt to obtain protected health information, OCR says.“The individual identifies themselves on the telephone as an OCR investigator, but does not provide an OCR complaint transaction number or any other verifiable information relating to an OCR investigation,” the HIPAA enforcement agency says.

Do this: “HIPAA covered entities and business associates should alert their workforce members, and can take action to verify that someone is an OCR investigator by asking for the investigator’s email address, which will end in @hhs.gov, and asking for a confirming email from the OCR investigator’s hhs.gov email address,” OCR advises.