Health Care Data Privacy & Security

Health care organizations hold some of the most sensitive and most regulated data there is, and the obligations around it keep expanding. HIPAA and HITECH set the baseline, but the real exposure now comes from the edges: website tracking technologies, third-party vendors, AI tools ingesting patient data, state privacy laws and a plaintiffs' bar that has made health care data a prime litigation target. A single breach or a tracking pixel quietly sharing data with an advertiser can trigger regulatory investigation, class action and serious reputational damage.

Phelps helps you get ahead of that risk and respond decisively when something goes wrong. We build practical privacy and security programs, advise on the technologies and vendor relationships that create exposure and lead clients through breach response and investigation when prevention is not enough.

How We Help

HIPAA and HITECH Compliance

We build and tighten the compliance backbone—policies, risk analyses, workforce training, business associate agreements and  security safeguards regulators expect to see. We help you document compliance in a way that holds up if it is ever questioned.

Website and Tracking Technology Risk

Tracking pixels, analytics tools and ad technology embedded in patient-facing websites and portals have become a leading source of enforcement and class action exposure. We assess what your site is actually sharing, advise on remediation and help you defend the choices you have made.

Phelps provides clients with a tailored regulatory playbook that maps their specific tracking technology exposure against current enforcement trends, OCR guidance and FTC expectations. It gives you a clear, prioritized roadmap for remediation and a framework for making defensible strategic decisions about which technologies to retain, modify or remove.

Regulatory Compliance and Patient Consent

Patient consent requirements are becoming more complex as health care data moves across providers, platforms and consumer-facing technologies. We help clients navigate informed-consent requirements under HIPAA, state privacy laws and emerging federal and state regulations, including determining when authorizations or other consent mechanisms are required for data sharing, use and disclosure.

We design consent-management processes and platforms that capture, document, honor and withdraw consent across systems, and advise on patient rights of access and amendment, including workflows for responding to requests and coordinating corrections across records and vendors. We also help clients address evolving consumer health data laws, ISO consent practices, disclosures and data-sharing arrangements, helping them remain aligned with changing regulatory requirements.

Data Breach Prevention and Response

When an incident hits, the first hours matter. Phelps will assess whether a breach requires outside counsel and the scope of such engagement. When necessary, we serve as the legal quarterback: we lead the legal analysis, determining whether a reportable breach has occurred under HIPAA and applicable state law, managing privilege, directing the forensic investigation, handling regulatory notification and issuing litigation holds while coordinating closely with—but remaining distinct from—your IT remediation and public relations functions. Before an incident, we help you build and test the response plan so you are not improvising under pressure.

Vendor and Business Associate Management

Much of your privacy risk lives with your vendors. We negotiate business associate agreements that allocate data breach risk where it belongs, advise on vendor diligence and help you manage the chain of obligations that follows patient data wherever it goes. We also draft and negotiate AI vendor agreements that address data-use limitations, model transparency and explainability, algorithmic-bias audit provisions, integration of business associate agreement obligations, allocation of liability for AI errors and failures, intellectual property ownership and permitted use of training data and model outputs. These terms are designed to preserve client control over patient data and create accountability across the AI supply chain.

Emerging Technology and AI

New tools raise new privacy questions faster than the rules can keep up. We help clients develop governance frameworks and practical policies for responsible AI deployment in clinical and administrative settings, including use-case approval, human oversight, data governance, documentation, monitoring and incident escalation. We advise on AI-specific compliance with FDA guidance on clinical decision support, ONC transparency requirements and CMS conditions of participation. We conduct AI readiness assessments to identify legal, operational and security gaps before an AI tool touches patient data. We then help implement guardrails  including access controls, validation, auditability and ongoing performance and bias monitoring so that innovation can move forward without outrunning compliance.

Why Clients Choose Phelps

We treat privacy as a business risk, not a checklist. Compliance documents do not help if they ignore how your organization actually handles data. We build programs that fit how you operate and hold up where it counts.

We connect privacy to everything it touches. Privacy issues run through your technology contracts, your AI tools, your transactions and your litigation exposure. Our privacy lawyers, many of whom have previous government experience, work alongside our technology, health care and litigation teams so nothing falls through the cracks.

We are ready before the breach, not just after. The clients who weather an incident are the ones who prepared for it. We help you build the plan and then stand with you if you ever have to use it.

Who We Help

• Hospitals and health systems
• Physician practices and specialty groups
• Digital health, health IT and telehealth companies
• Management services organizations and practice platforms
• Health-related private equity investors and their portfolio companies
• Health plans and managed care organizations
• Dental groups
• Ambulatory surgery centers and outpatient providers
• Pharmacies and clinical laboratories