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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 ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵ (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 ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵcommunity 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

Our Privacy Officer and Healthcare Civil Rights Coordinator: The ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵPrivacy 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 ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵHIPAA 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: ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵhas 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. ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵhas designated the following healthcare components of ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵas covered components subject to HIPAA: ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵHealth Morsani College of Medicine, and its constituent schools and departments (including its School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences); Taneja College of Pharmacy; ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵStudent Health Services; ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵHealth Neuroscience Institute (Home of the Johnnie B. Byrd, Sr. Alzheimer’s Center); ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵCollege 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 ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵCollege of Nursing; ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵMedical Services Support Corporation (MSSC); University Medical Service Association, Inc. (UMSA); and the ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵadministrative and operational units that support them.

We Participate in an Organized Health Care Arrangement:  ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵparticipates 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