{"id":47,"date":"2020-02-18T06:54:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T11:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/blog\/target\/united-states-friendly-reminder-hipaa-still-applies-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak\/"},"modified":"2020-02-19T03:27:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T08:27:28","slug":"united-states-friendly-reminder-hipaa-still-applies-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/blog\/2020\/02\/18\/united-states-friendly-reminder-hipaa-still-applies-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak\/","title":{"rendered":"Friendly Reminder: HIPAA Still Applies During The Coronavirus Outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mintz.com\/employmentlaborbenefitsviewpoints\">Employment, Labor &amp; Benefits<\/a> colleagues <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mintz.com\/insights-center\/viewpoints\/2226\/2020-01-coronavirus-outbreak-causes-employers-consider\">recently blogged<\/a> on the coronavirus and its ramifications for employers impacted by the outbreak. As this is still an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/coronavirus\/2019-ncov\/cases-in-us.html\">active outbreak<\/a> with cases increasing within the United States, it&#8217;s a good time to review how HIPAA applies in a public health emergency, including its restrictions and flexibility in this type of situation. Accordingly, last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released a helpful <a href=\"https:\/\/list.nih.gov\/cgi-bin\/wa.exe?A2=ind2002&amp;L=OCR-PRIVACY-LIST&amp;P=69\">bulletin<\/a> on how the HIPAA Privacy Rule comes into play with the coronavirus outbreak and other public health emergencies.<\/p>\n<p>The most important thing to remember is that basic requirements of HIPAA still apply even in a public health emergency. The HIPAA Privacy Rule permits covered entities to use and disclose protected health information (PHI) without a patient&#8217;s authorization for treatment, payment, and health care operations. Just because a public health emergency exists does not mean that covered entities can freely disclose PHI for other purposes. Disclosure of PHI to the media or others not involved in the patient&#8217;s care is generally not permissible. However, in a public health emergency, HIPAA permits covered entities to disclose PHI without a patient&#8217;s authorization to the following categories of individuals and entities:<\/p>\n<p>[\u2026]<\/p>\n<p id=\"mct-ai-attriblink\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mondaq.com\/unitedstates\/Food-Drugs-Healthcare-Life-Sciences\/894714\/Friendly-Reminder-HIPAA-Still-Applies-During-The-Coronavirus-Outbreak\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Click here to view full original article at www.mondaq.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"mct-ai-attriblink\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mintz.com\/employmentlaborbenefitsviewpoints\">Employment, Labor &amp; Benefits<\/a> colleagues <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mintz.com\/insights-center\/viewpoints\/2226\/2020-01-coronavirus-outbreak-causes-employers-consider\">recently blogged<\/a> on the coronavirus and its ramifications for employers impacted by the outbreak. As this is still an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/coronavirus\/2019-ncov\/cases-in-us.html\">active outbreak<\/a> with cases increasing within the United States, it&#8217;s a good time to review how HIPAA applies in a public health emergency, including its restrictions and flexibility in this type of situation. Accordingly, last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released a helpful <a href=\"https:\/\/list.nih.gov\/cgi-bin\/wa.exe?A2=ind2002&amp;L=OCR-PRIVACY-LIST&amp;P=69\">bulletin<\/a> on how the HIPAA Privacy Rule comes into play with the coronavirus outbreak and other public health emergencies.&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/blog\/2020\/02\/18\/united-states-friendly-reminder-hipaa-still-applies-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak\/\" class=\"read-more\">Read More <\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[17,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexcompliance.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}