Mission Statement
Overview
Our Mission: to foster innovative solutions that promote integrity and safeguard trust.
The objective of Privacy & Healthcare Civil Rights Compliance (PHCRC) is to safeguard public trust by empowering our University of South Florida (USF) community to uphold the highest legal and ethical standards related to healthcare business integrity and privacy protection.
We accomplish this by:
- Promoting a culture of compliance and decision-making consistent with our organizational values
- Establishing privacy policies, procedures, and guidelines
- Providing privacy education and outreach
- Analyzing and mitigating compliance and privacy risks
- Investigating and resolving issues of potential non-compliance
- Facilitating patients’ rights related to their health information
- Leading privacy incident response efforts and any subsequent breach reporting
- Mitigating privacy incidents
- Resolving privacy investigations with federal and state regulatory agencies
- Monitoring and evaluating the appropriateness of access to medical records
- Ensuring healthcare is delivered to our patients without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability in compliance with Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.
Our Goals: Our goals are to 1) promote information privacy awareness amongst the USF community and 2) ensure that USF’s workforce has the training and resources needed to protect private information, report privacy issues and concerns, and refer questions to us when additional guidance is needed.
Our Scope: We have oversight over federal and state privacy laws and regulations including, but not limited to, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Our Privacy Officer and Healthcare Civil Rights Coordinator: The USF Privacy Officer and Healthcare Civil Rights Coordinator is Barbara Wolodzko, JD, LL.M., LL.M., CHC, CCEP, CIPP/US. Barbara is the designated privacy official for the entire USF HIPAA Covered Entity and is responsible for overseeing compliance with all federal and state patient privacy regulations and privacy related policies, procedures, and best practices.
We are a Hybrid Entity: USF has designated itself as a "HIPAA Hybrid Entity," as that term is defined under HIPAA at 45 C.F.R. § 164.105, and, as such, includes both covered and non-covered functions. "Covered" functions are subject to HIPAA; whereas, "uncovered" functions are not. USF has designated the following healthcare components of USF as covered components subject to HIPAA: USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, and its constituent schools and departments (including its School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences); Taneja College of Pharmacy; USF Student Health Services; USF Health Neuroscience Institute (Home of the Johnnie B. Byrd, Sr. Alzheimer’s Center); USF College of Behavioral & Community Sciences Department of Communication Sciences and Speech Disorders; USF St. Peterburg campus Family Study Center, Infant Family Center; The advance practice providers under USF College of Nursing; USF Medical Services Support Corporation (MSSC); University Medical Service Association, Inc. (UMSA); and the USF administrative and operational units that support them.
We Participate in an Organized Health Care Arrangement: USF participates in an Organized Healthcare Arrangement (OHCA) with other healthcare providers. Within the OHCA, member organizations may share patient health information for treatment, payment, or operations related to the OHCA. Please refer to the Joint Notice of Privacy Practices below for a listing of the current OHCA participants.
Our Joint Notice of Privacy Practices: click here