Recently confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell has named Jocelyn Samuels as director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR). In this role, her duties also include enforcement of the HIPAA privacy, security and breach notification rules.
Jocelyn Samuels, new leader of OCR
Samuels previously served as acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Samuels will succeed Leon Rodriguez, who recently won Senate confirmation to become director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services unit in the Department of Homeland Security.
Samuels has held a variety of positions in the government and private sectors since receiving her law degree from Columbia University. Prior to her tenure with the Justice Department, she served as VP for Education and Employment at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C. and before that, she worked as Labor Counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy while he chaired the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Samuels joins OCR just in time for the start of Phase 2 of its HIPAA audit program (link to recent blog post), which will focus on priority areas identified by OCR. With a background in civil rights law, she will need to learn the new territory of HIPAA privacy, security and breach notification
