HIPAA Letter

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

[Month], [Year]
Dear [Administrator]:
I am writing to address any concerns you may have about your facility’s participation in the
Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) as it relates to the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. Please be assured that the standards of privacy of
protected individually identifiable health information implemented under the HIPAA privacy
regulation do not affect the data being collected for MCBS. Specifically, your cooperation with the
MCBS will not violate the HIPAA privacy regulations. Nor will it require any additional privacy
disclosure record keeping.
Under the HIPAA regulations, your facility does not need an individual’s authorization to disclose
their protected health information to a health plan, such as the Medicare program, when the
information is being disclosed for receiving organization’s health care operations activities. This
holds if both your facility and the Medicare program has or had a relationship with the individual
whose protected health information is being requested, and the protected information pertains to
such relationship. See 45 CFR § 164.506(c) (4). Furthermore, participating in the MCBS will not
impose additional disclosure record keeping burdens on your facility. Disclosures under 45 CFR §
are explicitly exempt from the HIPAA disclosure accounting provisions. See 45 CFR § 164.528 (a)
(1) (i).
I hope this information addresses any questions you had. If you have further questions or concerns
about the study, please call me at (410) 786-5525. You may also contact our data collection agent,
NORC at the University of Chicago, toll-free at 1-844-777-2151, or email NORC at
[email protected]. You can visit the new MCBS website at mcbs.norc.org to learn more. We
sincerely hope you will participate in this very important study.
Sincerely,

Marina Vornovitsky
Director, Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Enclosure
OMB No. 0938-0568 | Expires 8/31/2025