The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is aggressively enforcing HIPAA’s right of access.
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Since September 2019, there have been 25 enforcement actions.
OCR created the HIPAA Right of Access Initiative to support patients’ right to timely access their health records at a reasonable cost.
The average provider fine is over $57,000.
What does that mean for your practice?
It’s time to ensure that you are compliant and your staff is trained regarding providing patients with their records.
HIPAA was created to protect the privacy of protected health information (PHI), and also to assure that health information is accessible by the patient and the patients’ other providers.
The HIPAA Right of Access complaints have largely been based on timeliness and cost of access.
After receiving a request, a healthcare entity has 30 days to provide the individual or their representative with their records. The 30 days is without an extension.
Frequently, liability is based on a failure to timely correct.
Contact your healthcare lawyer as soon as you have been contacted by the OCR. Act quickly, but also act intelligently.
Many of the settlements are accompanied by OCR monitoring of the practice for a set period of time.
Protect your practice now by ensuring employees are trained to handle requests and processes and procedures are in place.
Contact Rickard & Associates today if you need help with your patient access policies, employee training, or OCR response.
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