HIPAA Data Breaches: A Case Study
St. David’s South Austin Medical Center (the “Hospital”) has received a letter from John Craven, an attorney representing former Hospital patient Ramona Reeves. Mr. Craven states that the Hospital’s entering into a Settlement Agreement with GEICO Insurance Company after the Hospital’s receipt of Ms. Reeves’ “HIPPA (sic) Revocation/Cancellation of Prior Authorization” constituted a wrongful disclosure of her individually identifiable health information (“PHI”). You have asked us to evaluate whether the provision of billing information and/or entering into the settlement agreement with GEICO violated HIPAA. The answer is no.
When examining the case of the State of California against Dr Huping Zhou, we can conclude that the HIPAA law is a meaningful law set in place to protect patients’ privacy, and any one violating this law, regardless of your position in the health care field can be persecuted, punished for violating the law, even in the absence damages evidence resulting from the violation of the law. The purpose of this post is to discuss the case of the State of California against the physician, Dr Huping Zhou. In this post, I will review the HIPAA law, the penalties for violation of the law and why I feel that Doctor Zhou was very fortunate to receve the punishments four months in prison and just $2000 in fine. As a physician, a researcher of UCLA School
The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act also known as HIPAA has set a national standard for the handling of electronically stored medical records. Medical confidentiality protects conversations between a patient and his or her doctor from being used against the patient in court. It is a part of the rules of evidence in many common law jurisdictions. The penalties for violating HIPPA are based on the level of negligence and can range from $100 to $50,000 per violation or per record, with a maximum of $1.5 million per year. Violations can also carry criminal charges that can result in jail time.
The walls in the office of healthcare providers are made sound proof by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA). Sound proof meaning that each patient’s healthcare information can only be shared between the provider and the patient; their information is required to remain confidential by law. In 1996, HIPPA was passed by congress; the act included regulations that would help to protect patient privacy and health information (Petersen, 2001). After reading the novel, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot one may be appalled and think that what occurs in the novel is a complete violation of HIPPA. But, the time frame needs to be taken into consideration.
This limit on communication slows research, workflow, and efficiency. Dr. Deeb Salem shared an example about a patient who underwent a cardiac transplantation and two days later the care team was informed that the donors blood revealed bacteremia. The doctors contacted the hospital who had cared for the, now-deceased, donor in an attempt to confirm the identity of bacterium so that proper antibiotics could be used. Although time was crucial for the recipient, the donor's hospital stated that providing such information would violate HIPAA, since the hospital did not have authorization from the donor (Salem, 2003). Confronting the issues with HIPPA is necessary in order to avoid situations as such and increase overall communication between medical
Since HIPAA become mandatory on most of the health care organization, patient information is more secure compared to previous. Health care organization are investing huge amount of fund for safety measures to protect the patient information and i think this is the main concern in today's advanced health care
The breach I found was from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee on October 2, 2009. This case was the largest breach incident as of October 2009 under the HITECH breach notification rule. The breach affected more than 1 million individuals. HIPAA privacy and security rules were breached. Security evaluations and physical safeguards are required under the HIPAA security rule.
In conclusion, HIPAA has made going to the physicians a little easier because now people can give his or her information without being worried someone will take it. Even though some may get his or her identity stolen, he or she can relax knowing that everything will be done to who did it and received theft tracking up to two
Nurses and doctors take the oath to protect the privacy and the confidentiality of patients. Patients and their medical conditions should not be discussed with anyone who is not treating the patient. Electronic health records are held to the same standards as nurses in that information is to be kept between, and shared only with the immediate care team. HIPAA violations are not taken lightly nor are the violation fines cheap. Depending on the violation, a hospital can be fined from $100 to $50,000 per violation (National Nurse 2011 p 23).
The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule requires HIPAA covered entities and their business associates to provide notification following a breach of unsecured protected health information. Similar breach notification provisions implemented and enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), apply to vendors of personal health records and their third party service providers, pursuant to section 13407 of the HITECH Act. . ("Privacy HHS.gov," n.d.) An example of this rule is a hospital disclosed protected health information to an employer about an employee without authorization. To correct the actions the Office for Civil Rights required the hospital to revise its procedures on patient authorization prior to release of protected health information
Every organization is at risk for breach, but the difference between entities will be reflected in how they implement policies, procedures and corrective actions. For example, changes to the HIPAA rules regarding the accounting of health information disclosures expected this year have the potential to dramatically expand HIM and release of information (ROI) responsibilities and pose operational challenges. Every step within the release of information should be addressed through training, with these particular areas: front desk personnel, document identification and the pre-shipment validation. Finally, just prior to submission to the requester, release of information staff should always validate that only the uniquely authorized information has been included an that the information imported into the release of information process for disclosure belongs exclusively to that patient. If this is the case, the the release of information staff must implement and perform quality control measures to validate that another patient's information was not inadvertently imaged or indexed to the original patient's
HIPAA is legislation that is mostly used in United States for the protection and privacy of the patient’s information. The medical information is protected by HIPAA whereby it ensures safe access to health and other personal information. HIPAA is therefore divided into five rules and regulations. There is private rule which ensures that all the information about individual’s health is highly protected. Private rule allows a good flow of health care information to ensure that an individual gets the best quality health care.
As records were shared electronically rules were implemented for clinicians to follow known as The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 (Summary of the HIPAA Security Rule ,2013). These rules were implemented for clinicians to protect the
New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center finally agreed in 2014 to pay a settlement of $4.8 million dollars for HIPPA violations that happened in 2010 (McCann, 2014, para. 2). The violation involved patients’ electronic health records data being found on Google. According to McCann (2014), “the HIPPA breach transpired when a CU physician, who developed applications for NYP and CU, attempted to deactivate a personally-owned computer server on the network containing ePHI’ (para. 3). Because the hospital lacked technical safeguards, the patients’ electronic health records were be able to be accessed once server was deactivated. Because the institutions were fined a record setting of $4.8 million dollars,
It does not matter the reason you got, give directly or indirectly patient information to someone or the simple thing to check any patient information without a consent form is illegal. HIPAA do not play with that. Any violation to HIPAA occurring on or after 2/18/2009 will have a penalty of $100 to $50,000 or more per violation. A person who knowingly obtains or discloses individually identifiable health information in violation of the Privacy Rule may face a criminal penalty too. HIPAA is not about the money, is about people lives, people safety, people privacy and rights.
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