Quiz: HIPAA Complaints

Quiz:

Which two violations made the list of HIPAA’s Privacy 10 most common violations?

a) Employees snooping on celebrities, friends, and families’ medical records.

b) Refusing to provide patients’ a copy of their medical records within 30 days.

c) Conducting psychiatric assessments, over Zoom platform, without patient’s written or verbal consent.

Ans. A) and B)

Case Example #1. An employee snooping….

"One doctor, whom we will call Dr. Z, an employee of the University of California Los Angeles Health System, accessed the unauthorized records of patients 323 times. .. to snoop.

Dr. Z became the first healthcare employee to be jailed for a HIPAA violation and was sentenced to four months in federal prison.

The University of California Los Angeles Health System was fined by the Department of HHS’ Office of Civil Rights.

Case Example #2: Procrastinating in honoring a medical records request…

When a request is received, HIPAA-covered entities are required to provide a copy of the requested records within 30 days. The Office of Civil Rights received two complaints from patients of Banner Health-affiliated covered entities alleging long delays in receiving copies of medical records. The first patient submitted a request to Banner Estrella Medical Center in December 2017 and was not provided with the requested records until May 2018. Another patient submitted a complaint alleging they had to wait five months for an electronic copy of his records.

Outcome: Banner Health was fined $200,000.

Here is another takeaway:

The Office of Civil Rights received 30,435 new complaints alleging violations of HIPAA Rules.

Sources: 1) U.S. Department of Health and Human Service Office for Civil Rights. Report to Congress on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. 2) HIPAA Journal, Jan.13, 2012."