Health and Human Services has asked the General Services Administration (GSA) to contract with approved specialists to develop “training courses and related materials to educate staff from the offices of State Attorney General’s and others about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules.”

With the new mandatory HIPAA fines effective soon, this is a promising sign that eventually Attorney General’s around the country will more forcefully utilize their new HIPAA enforcement powers under HITECH.  To date, only a few state AGs have and it seems the HHS wants them taking a more vigilant and aggressive role.

According to the informational release, the project will “assist state attorney general’s in their efforts to exercise their new enforcement authority and promote productive and effective enforcement relationships with them, OCR will develop and convene a series of training seminars focused on enforcement of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules.”

NAID will be monitoring the situation with the hopes of integrating its new training regime and video series into whatever training program emerges.