HIPAA Archives | PRS Pharmacy Services

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,…

COVID-19 and Pharmacy

March 26, 2020

COVID-19. We all know what it is by now – no need to explain further. For specific information about COVID-19 from the experts, please visit the CDC website, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). In this blog, we will cover regulations and actions your Pharmacy can take to help your staff, patients, and community stay healthy. We will also share links to various websites with relevant information for Pharmacy. COVID-19 and HIPAA For the most part, the HIPAA Rules remain the same,…

Common HIPAA Issues – Part 2: Breaches

February 17, 2020

The next area we want to discuss is breaches – the cause of most audits. Almost all covered entities will have a breach in the privacy of protected health information (PHI). Ultimately, by ensuring you have enacted the appropriate policies and procedures, performed your risk analysis and management plan, developed appropriate technical and physical safeguards, and trained your employees, you are doing all you can to prevent these breaches from occurring. However, even with all of this, breaches still happen.…

Common HIPAA Issues – Part 1: Training

January 27, 2020

HIPAA is an area of compliance that has been around for a while now – almost 17 years. Over this long period of time, the Federal Government has continuously increased the level of scrutiny and amount of fines they have placed on Covered Entities (including Pharmacies). Because HIPAA has been in effect for so long, there is no excuse to be noncompliant. The first time the Office of Civil Rights (OCR; the Federal entity responsible for HIPAA enforcement) comes knocking, it is typically the result of a privacy breach or a complaint received by a consumer (or whistleblower). Depending on the circumstances of the breach or event, the OCR may conduct an investigation. During an…