On April 22, 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration, through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a final rule, entitled HIPAA Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy. HHS issued this final rule after hearing from communities that changes were needed to better protect patient confidentiality and prevent medical records from being used against people for providing or obtaining lawful reproductive health care. The final rule strengthens the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule by prohibiting the disclosure of protected health information (PHI) where the PHI is sought for use against any person for merely seeking,

A new proposed rule released today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) details HHS’ first steps for holding health care providers accountable for information blocking under the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act). Specifically, the “21st Century Cures Act: Establishment of Disincentives for Health Care Providers That Have Committed Information Blocking” proposed rule proposes to establish a department-wide regulatory framework for managing disincentives and proposes an initial set of appropriate disincentives in Centers for Medicare &

We often get asked about how ONC’s information blocking regulations and HHS’ Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules (HIPAA Rules) interact with one another. To help clarify, ONC just released a few new information blocking frequently asked questions (FAQs) that illustrate how the federal regulations interact. This post also reviews how the information blocking regulations interact with the HIPAA Privacy Rule and other laws that impose specific restrictions on information sharing to protect the privacy of an individual’s health information.