FBI Report on Cyber-Crime Extortions
In 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported receiving 51,146 extortion-related cyber-crime complaints that involved adjusted losses of over $83 million.…
Compliance Offices Are Assuming Additional Responsibilities
Most have taken on responsibilities for HIPAA Privacy and Internal Audit For many organizations, the Compliance Officer is a convenient…
OCR’s New Cybersecurity Newsletter Provides Insight into Two Cybersecurity Threats
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently released a “Spring 2019 OCR Cybersecurity…
Most Organizations Do Not Have Their Compliance Programs Independently Evaluated for Effectiveness
Many seem to confuse ongoing compliance program monitoring with auditing Compliance Officers can’t independently audit their own programs Only an…
Mitigating Unauthorized Disclosures of PHI by Employees or Former Employees
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently submitted two reports to select congressional…
OCR Focusing on Enforcing Patients’ Rights to Access
In a Bloomberg Law article regarding last month’s National Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Summit, reporter James Swann…
New OIG Final Rule Regarding State Medicaid Fraud Control Units
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released a final rule to align the regulations…
Developing and Revising Your Organization’s Code of Conduct
The Code of Conduct (Code) should be a statement of an organization’s guiding principles and standards, and it must be…
HHS OIG Proposes Changes to AKS Discount Safe Harbor
In early February, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) proposed amendments to the Anti-Kickback…
Assessing Internal Controls is Critical to Effective Compliance Programs
Compliance Officers are faced with ever-changing laws and regulations and intense scrutiny by regulatory and enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, Compliance Officers…
Issues with Physician Sanction Checking
With the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and state Medicaid Agencies all calling…
Tips on Hotline Effectiveness
Employee communication of compliance issues through a hotline is vital to any effective compliance program. The challenge is finding useable…