Leveraging Knowledge to Manage Your Data Risks
In October 2022, Advocate Aurora Health notified three million individuals of a data breach resulting from its use of tracking pixels on its website for tracking website visitor activity. Now, this month, Advocate Aurora Health settled a class action stemming from that data breach for $12.25 million.
In its breach notification to patients, Advocate Aurora…
State privacy laws are changing rapidly in the U.S. Here are summaries of seven new state laws that have been enacted and go into effect in the next few years. We anticipate that more state legislatures will continue to enact privacy laws to protect consumers due to the absence of a federal privacy law.
Under each of the acts summarized below, consumers will have the right to access their personal data, the right to correct inaccurate data, the right to data portability, the right to have their data deleted, and the right to opt out of targeted advertising of personal data. Businesses will be required to practice purpose limitation, maintain data security, get consumer consent for data processing, and complete regular data impact assessments. Businesses will be barred from discriminating against consumers who exercise their rights under the law and will be required to secure data processing agreements with service providers. Similarly, these laws each exclude financial institutions or their affiliates that are governed by, or personal data that is collected, processed, sold, or disclosed in accordance with, Title V of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act ; state bodies/agencies; nonprofit organizations; institutions of higher education; national securities associations registered with the SEC; and covered entities or business associates as defined in the privacy regulations of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).…
On May 17, 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a settlement with MedEvolve, Inc. for $350,000. MedEvolve provides practice and revenue cycle management and practice analytics software services to health care entities. The settlement resulted from MedEvolve’s alleged violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability…
One of the challenging things about HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) enforcement is the fact that both the Office for Civil Rights and State AGs have jurisdiction to assess fines and penalties for HIPAA violations. The old double whammy.
States enforce those rights sparingly, but New Jersey is getting itself on the map…
Last week, Diabetes, Endocrinology & Lipidology Center Inc. (DELC) of West Virginia reached a $5,000 settlement with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) over allegations that it failed to provide timely access to a patient’s health records. The OCR alleged that DELC waited more than two years to send a minor’s medical records to their…
Washington legislators recently introduced the Washington Privacy Act (WPA). This legislation is a consumer-focused privacy law similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) but it also has some European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)-like concepts. The WPA protects personal data in much the same way as the CCPA, but with some significant differences.…
On April 30, 2018, a Massachusetts physician was convicted of a criminal violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), as well as one count of obstruction of a criminal health care investigation, in a Massachusetts federal court. The convictions relate to the purported sharing of confidential patient information by the…
The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts recently announced that three former district managers of the pharmaceutical firm Warner Chilcott have been sentenced for violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and committing healthcare fraud.
The allegations include that the district managers directed certain sales representatives to fill out prior…
Federal regulators announced last week that Illinois’ largest hospital chain would pay $5.5 million, a record payment under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), in connection with three 2013 data breaches that affected the protected health information of millions of its patients. The Advocate Health Care Network, which manages twelve hospitals and hundreds…
One in five U.S. consumers are tracking their every movement, from their heart-rate, skin temperature, respiratory rate to their activity levels, food intake, weight, and sleep patterns. With this so-called ‘black box’ for the human body, this data collected through our wearable fitness devices has great potential to be used to bolster or dispute a…
