Court vacates certain HIPAA health record access requirements

A federal court last week certain provisions in a 2013 rule modifying the HIPAA privacy, security and enforcement rules under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act and Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, the Department of Health and Human Services鈥 Office for Civil Rights today. In a case challenging provisions that cover an individual鈥檚 access to protected health information, the court vacated the 鈥渢hird-party directive鈥 within the individual right of access 鈥渋nsofar as it expands the HITECH Act鈥檚 third-party directive beyond requests for a copy of an electronic health record with respect to [protected health information] of an individual 鈥 in an electronic format,鈥 OCR said. In addition, the fee limitation set forth in those provisions will apply only to an individual鈥檚 request for access to their own records, not to an individual鈥檚 request to transmit records to a third party, the agency said.