In a recent decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) determined that customer ZIP Codes are “personal identification information” that retailers are prohibited from collecting during credit card transactions. With this decision, the Massachusetts high court may have set off a wave of new class-action lawsuits against retailers that collected customer ZIP Codes. Especially [...]
Tag Archives: Massachusetts
Massachusetts Attorney General Secures $140,000 Settlement of Claims that Patient Information Was Left in a Town Dump
The Massachusetts Attorney General announced today that the former owners of a medical billing practice and four pathology groups have agreed to collectively pay $140,000 to settle allegations that medical records and patient billing information for “tens of thousands of Massachusetts patients were improperly disposed of at a public dump.” Under the settlements, the defendants have agreed to pay a [...]
Protecting Health Information: Health Data Security Training
It was a pleasure to be on a panel with members of the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General last week at the Massachusetts Medical Society to talk about how physicians can protect health information in our presentation entitled: ”Protecting Health Information: Health Data Security Training.” We covered the latest in federal law (HIPAA, [...]
The Coming Boom in HIV Testing (and Requests for Production of HIV Records)
With relatively little fanfare, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed S.2158, into law on April 27, 2012, making HIV testing possible with simply verbal consent, as opposed to written consent. The legislation amends Mass. Gen. L. ch. 111, section 70F; its aim is to increase screening for HIV and I believe it will have that effect. Will [...]
Deadlines, Deadlines, Deadlines: Three Important Privacy and Security Dates
In the past several days, three important information privacy and security deadlines have arrived. To recap, they are: February 17, 2010: the provisions of the HITECH Act regarding HIPAA business associates went into effect (albeit without regulations, which are expected to be issued any day now). Many HIPAA covered entities have been revising their Business Associate [...]
ALERT: Massachusetts Gives Businesses Until January 1, 2010 to Adopt Information Security Programs To Comply With Recent Identity Theft Regulations
On Thursday, February 12, 2009, the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation (OCABR) issued a public statement indicating that it is extending the May 1, 2009 deadline to comply with recent Massachusetts identity theft regulations until January 1, 2010. The Massachusetts identity theft regulations affect entities that own, license, store or maintain personal [...]