The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell has named Jocelyn Samuels the next director of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the HHS unit that enforces the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance, according to reports from various news media outlets.
Currently, Samuels is the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, she is responsible for leadership of the Civil Rights Division as a whole and for fulfillment of the Division’s mission to defend civil rights and to ensure and expand equal opportunity for individuals across the country
Samuels will replace Leon Rodriguez, reports say. Rodriguez was officially confirmed by the Senate to serve as director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the Department of Homeland Security on June 24. President Barack Obama nominated Rodriguez in January.
About the Author
Rajiv Leventhal
Managing Editor
Rajiv Leventhal is Managing Editor of Healthcare Innovation, covering healthcare IT leadership and strategy. Since 2012, he has been covering health IT developments for the publication's CIO and CMIO-based audience, and has taken keen interest in areas such as policy and payment, patient engagement, health information exchange, mobile health, healthcare data security, and telemedicine.
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