New HIPAA Settlement Is the First under OCR’s Right of Access Initiative

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced last week that it entered into a Resolution Agreement with a Florida medical center (“Medical Center”) following allegations that the Medical Center failed to respond to a patient’s request for medical records in a timely fashion and in violation of the patient’s right to access such records under HIPAA. While the $85,000 settlement amount is relatively small in comparison to the…