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 HIPAA is an acronym that stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. It provides privacy standards that protect patients' protected health information (PHI). The standard requires covered entities (doctors, dentists, labs, hospitals and other healthcare providers) to establish administrative, physical and technical safeguards to protect this information.   Fortunately these requirements are intended to be scaleable and flexible. "One size doesn't fit all" is a good way to look at the scaleability of HIPAA. Implement technology and safeguards appropriate to your situation. Consider the size of the practice, the cost of implementation and the potential risk to ePHI among other things. Flexibility allows...

 We're not even into March yet and we've already seen a busy start to 2017. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) announced the 4th settlement of the year with Memorial Health Systems of Hollywood, Florida. They paid $5.5 million to settle claims it violated HIPAA requirements under the Privacy and Security Rules.. The other settlements in 2017 were Children's Medical Center in Dallas to a tune of $3.2 million, MAPFRE, a life insurance company out of Puerto Rico for $2.2 million and Presence Health from the Chicago area.  Presence Health is interesting in the fact it was the first violation stemming from the Breach...