New Proposed Regulations Regarding Accounting of Disclosures under the HITECH Act

Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) formally published its proposed regulations implementing changes to the Accounting of Disclosures provisions under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”).  The proposed regulations arise from requirements in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (“HITECH”), passed as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  HITECH made several changes to HIPAA, including expanding the scope of the HIPAA Privacy Rule provisions that provide individuals with the right to obtain an accounting of disclosures of their protected health information (“PHI”).  We summarized that particular aspect of HITECH in an alert that is available on our website at: