HIPAA & Pharmacy Compliance Archives| PRS Pharmacy Services

HIPAA Is Not Just About Training

April 8, 2022

PRS still receives many questions from non HIPAATrack Members about whether written (or electronic) Policies and Procedures are required for their Pharmacy business. These questions have typically come from Pharmacies that have purchased a Training Program or Continuing Education, or they may have received a “free” “HIPAA Program” from their wholesaler or other entity. These Training Programs, CEs and “free” Programs typically do not include actual Policies and Procedures to implement by the Pharmacy, making them effectively useless as far…

HIPAA Access to Records

August 9, 2021

In this blog, we will discuss one of the “rights” that HIPAA gives individuals concerning their medical records. HIPAA provides the individual with the right to access their records in a “timely” fashion. While not the most cumbersome act in many Pharmacies, the request from patients to access their records is something Pharmacies must respond to in a quick and timely fashion. The Officer of Civil Rights (OCR), the agency responsible for the enforcement of HIPAA, believes that a Patient…

Common HIPAA Issues – Part 3: Policies and Procedures

April 2, 2021

HIPAA Policies and Procedures are the foundation of your Pharmacy’s overall HIPAA Compliance and employee Training. Policies and Procedures also happen to be one of the items most often found to be missing, incomplete, or not up-to-date during investigations conducted by the Office of Civil Rights (OCR). What does HIPAA say about Policies and Procedures? HIPAA clearly states you need to have Policies and Procedures. If we look at 45 C.F.R. § 164.530(i), we find that it states the following: “covered entity…

HIPAA Breach Leads to Another HIPAA Investigation and Settlement

August 3, 2020

HIPAA Compliance can take time and money, but a breach will cost you even more money through governmental fines and in repairing the reputation and trust you may have lost with your patients and community. In some cases, you may also have to pay for identity theft monitoring, if the information exposed could be used to steal an individual’s identity – and this would be needed for each patient whose data was breached. In July of 2020, the Office of…

HIPAA and the CARES Act

April 2, 2020

We wanted to write a short blog post today to cover the HIPAA and the CARES Act. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) was signed into law by President Trump on 3/27/2020. In this law, you will come across a reference to HIPAA. As many of you may know, we have been expecting some updates to the HIPAA Regulations for a few years now. Is this the HIPAA update we have been waiting to see? No,…