CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCES

(January 15 – 21, 2021)

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OCR Announces HIPAA/COVID-19 Vaccination Enforcement Discretion

The Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced that it will exercise its enforcement discretion not to impose penalties against covered health care providers or their business associates for certain violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) in connection with the good faith and limited-purpose use of online or web-based scheduling applications for the scheduling of individual COVID-19 vaccination appointments during the ongoing COVID-19 public health emergency.  This enforcement discretion is immediately effective and has retroactive effect to December 11, 2020.  More information can be found here.