USR Holdings

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a $337,750 settlement with USR Holdings, LLC, a business associate in Florida, under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Security Rule. OCR enforces the HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules, which set forth the requirements that covered entities (health plans, health care clearinghouses, and most health care providers), and business associates must follow to protect the privacy and security of protected health information (PHI). The HIPAA Security Rule establishes national standards to protect and secure our health care system by requiring administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic PHI (ePHI). The settlement resolves a breach investigation concerning the deletion of ePHI by an unauthorized third party. “Health care entities need to ensure that they are proactively monitoring who is in their information systems, and that they have backup procedures in place to be able to create exact copies of the electronic protected health information they hold, in the e