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Law360 (April 9, 2020, 6:08 PM EDT ) Health care providers are getting some more leeway when it comes to HIPAA compliance, as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday it won't be imposing penalties for violations stemming from the "good faith participation" in COVID-19 testing sites.
According to the statement, HHS' Office of Civil Rights won't be hitting "covered entities or business associates" with penalties for violations of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act rules connected to their work with the testing sites during the nationwide public health emergency resulting from the outbreak of COVID-19.
Roger Severino, the director of the OCR, told Law360 in a statement Thursday that the "administration is making every effort to ramp up mobile testing sites across the country."
"OCR's enforcement discretion supports these critical efforts to test and diagnose patients during this nationwide emergency," Severino said.
The office said that the decision — which is retroactive to March 13 — is meant to support certain health care providers taking part in sites that are only offering COVID-19 specimen collection or testing. The covered providers include some large pharmacy chains, according to the office.
"President [Donald] Trump has ordered the federal government to use every tool available to help save lives during this crisis, and this announcement is another concrete example of putting the president's directive into action," Severino said in the agency's statement.
On April 2, the OCR announced that it wouldn't be handing out penalties to health care providers for violations of the HIPAA privacy rule that stemmed from "good faith uses and disclosures of protected health information by business associates for public health and health oversight activities" during the emergency.
And in March, the office released guidance that it wouldn't penalize providers for HIPAA violations resulting from "their good faith provision of telehealth using communication technologies" while the public health emergency is ongoing.
--Editing by Jay Jackson Jr.
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