HHS Exercises HIPAA Discretion for Community-Based Testing Sites (CBTS)

April 10, 2020

On April 9th the HHS released guidance on how it is exercising discretion in applying privacy and security standards under HIPAA to CBTS during the COVID-19 nationwide public health emergency. OCR encourages health care providers to implement reasonable safeguards to protect the privacy and security of individuals’ PHI, such as setting up canopies or similar opaque barriers to provide privacy to individuals during the collection of samples and controlling foot and car traffic to create adequate distancing both to protect privacy and to minimize the risk of spreading COVID-19, etc.