HIPAA Privacy Violations May Trigger False Advertising
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Healthcare providers and insurers should worry more about enforcement actions from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state consumer protection agencies than the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over violations of the HIPAA privacy rule. They should be concerned about how health privacy and security violations may lead to legal troubles in other areas of law. The HHS Office for Civil Rights and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are focused on encouraging voluntary compliance and not on imposing the civil penalties allowed under HIPAA. That’s not necessarily going to be the approach to privacy and information security taken by the FTC, state consumer protection agencies, and patient attorneys who may use HIPAA privacy violations as evidence to support lawsuits brought under other laws. To provide healthcare organizations with one last look at their Notices of Privacy Practices and other privacy policies before the April 14 Privacy Rule enforcement deadline, Health Information Privacy Alert is sponsoring “The Real Enforcement Threat: How the FTC and States Will Enforce Medical Privacy Protections.” The seminar will focus on why federal and state consumer protection laws and not HIPAA, itself, will provoke the most serious legal threats to covered entities trying to comply with federal patient privacy rules. The Faculty: The briefing features Dean Forbes, an FTC attorney who negotiated the FTC’s landmark 2002 settlement with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, when it accidentally released 669 email addresses of consumers who had signed up for Lilly’s Prozac Medi-Messenger email remainder service. Mr. Forbes serves in the Division of Advertising Practices for the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. John Conniff is a partner in Jay Grant & Associates, a respected policy consulting firm in Washington, DC. From 1993 to 2000 he served as Deputy Commissioner for Health Policy with the Washington State Office of Insurance. During that time, he chaired various committees for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) including the task force that developed the NAIC’s model state health information privacy law. Liisa M. Thomas is an attorney in the Technology Department of Gardner Carton & Douglas LLC. Ms. Thomas is the founder and chair of the firm’s Privacy Practice Group. Her practice also includes, advertising and intellectual property law. She is an adjunct professor at the John Marshall Law School. |