National Pharmacy Chain Extends Protections for PHI on Insurance Cards
National Pharmacy Chain Extends Protections for PHI on Insurance Cards
Covered Entity: Pharmacies
Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures; Safeguards
A pharmacy employee placed a customer's insurance card in another
customer's prescription bag. The pharmacy did not consider the
customer's insurance card to be protected health information (PHI). OCR
clarified that an individual's health insurance card meets the statutory
definition of PHI and, as such, needs to be safeguarded. Among other
corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, the
pharmacy revised its policies regarding PHI and retrained its staff. The
revised policies are applicable to all individual stores in the
pharmacy chain.
| Tuesday, November 1, 2022 Modernizing Medicine Inc. (ModMed), an electronic health record (EHR) technology vendor located in Boca Raton, Florida, has agreed to pay $45 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act (FCA) by accepting and providing unlawful remuneration in exchange for referrals and by causing its users to report inaccurate information in connection with claims for federal incentive payments. The Anti-Kickback Statute prohibits anyone from offering or paying, directly or indirectly, any remuneration — which includes money or any other thing of value — to induce referrals of items or services covered by Medicare, ...read more |
| Private Practice Revises Policies and Procedures Addressing Activities Preparatory to Research Covered Entity: Private Practice Issue: Impermissible Disclosure-Research A private practice physician who was the principal investigator of a clinical research study disclosed a list of patients and diagnostic codes to a contract research organization to telephone patients for recruitment purposes. The disclosure was not consistent with documents approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The private practice maintained that the disclosure to the contract research organization was permissible as a review preparatory to research. Activities considered “preparatory to research” include: preparing a research protocol; developing a research hypothesis; ...read more |
| Public Hospital Corrects Impermissible Disclosure of PHI in Response to a Subpoena Covered Entity: General Hospital Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures A public hospital, in response to a subpoena (not accompanied by a court order), impermissibly disclosed the protected health information (PHI) of one of its patients. Contrary to the Privacy Rule protections for information sought for administrative or judicial proceedings, the hospital failed to determine that reasonable efforts had been made to insure that the individual whose PHI was being sought received notice of the request and/or failed to receive satisfactory assurance that the party seeking the information ...read more |
| What is a covered entity’s obligation under the Breach Notification Rule if it transmits an individual’s PHI to a third party designated by the individual in an access request, and the entity discovers the information was breached in transit? This guidance remains in effect only to the extent that it is consistent with the court’s order in Ciox Health, LLC v. Azar, No. 18-cv-0040 (D.D.C. January 23, 2020), which may be found at https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2018cv0040-51. More information about the order is available at https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/court-order-right-of-access/index.html. Any provision within this guidance that has been vacated by the Ciox Health decision is rescinded. ...read more |
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