San Diego Family Care, a Californian provider of medical, dental, & mental health services, has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit filed by patients affected by a data breach in 2020. The data breach that sparked the lawsuit was announced by the healthcare provider in May 2021 and was reported to the HHS’ Office… Read More »

The South Carolina-based health insurance company, Choice Health, now part of Alight Solutions, has recently announced that the protected health information of some of its members has been obtained by an unauthorized individual. Choice Health discovered on May 14, 2022, that an individual was offering a set of data that had allegedly been stolen from… Read More »

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Shields Health Care Group over its recently announced 2 million-record data breach – the largest healthcare data breach to be reported so far this year. Shields Health Care Group is the largest provider of MRI imaging services in New England and operates more than 40 facilities in… Read More »

Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest nonprofit health plan and healthcare providers in the United States, has reported a breach of its email system. Kaiser Permanente provides healthcare services to more than 12.5 million patients in 8 states and D.C. but said this breach only affected around 70,000 members of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of… Read More »

Start preparing now and get your telehealth services HIPAA compliant as when the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) ends, the telehealth HIPAA flexibilities stop. That is the advice of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, which released new guidance this week on HIPAA and audio-only telehealth services. The Period of… Read More »

Dalen Dental Clinic in Whitefish, MT, has been confirmed as achieving compliance with the Privacy, Security, Breach Notification, and Omnibus Rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the standards of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. Dental practices that conduct transactions electronically are classed as HIPAA-covered… Read More »

The HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is producing a video presentation to help HIPAA-regulated entities implement “Recognized Security Practices.” The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was recently amended (Public Law 116-321) to require OCR to consider recognized security practices that have been in place for at least 12 months… Read More »

Yuma Regional Medical Center (YRMC) in Arizona has announced it was the victim of a ransomware attack in April in which the attackers obtained the protected health information of approximately 700,000 current and former patients. According to the recent YRMC announcement, the attack was detected on April 25, 2022, which affected some of its IT… Read More »

Earlier this year, the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights issued a request for information (RFI) on how the financial penalties for HIPAA violations should be distributed to individuals who have been harmed by those HIPAA violations, and the “recognized security practices” under the amended Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. The… Read More »

Aesto Health, a Birmingham, AL-based software company that provides solutions to help healthcare enterprises and medical providers exchange, organize, and protect patient information, has announced it recently experienced a cyberattack that caused disruption to certain internal IT systems. The security breach was detected on March 8, 2022, and steps were immediately taken to prevent further… Read More »