HIPAA Law Violations

HIPAA protects the information of each patient and requires strict confidentiality of the professional that work in a healthcare institution, medical office and anywhere where healthcare services are provided. “HIPAA considerations include the need to be able to provide the client, upon request, with a log of caregivers who have accessed his or her chart” (Hebda & Czar, 2013, p.288). In this case I consider that Kevin shouldn’t access his mother’s record unless he is authorized by her or the nurse in charge of her care that authorizes him to have access to it to write notes, orders and document each encounter with the patient. The clerks unit can access the patient chart if they are required to give information to authorize a procedure, study or a copy for study results or for labs, otherwise they either can’t access them. In Kaneesha is not right either for Kevin to be

HIPAA is governed by 2 entities, the Privacy Rule and the Security Rule. These two rules dictates to outline what the Health and Human Services (HHS) requires to handle Protected Health Information (PHI) in all forms. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) enforces HIPAA and can leverage

The law that prohibits unauthorized access of patients charts is HIPAA. HIPPA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. HIPPAS number 1 priority is to keep patients Health Medical Records protected and confidential.

The HIPAA Rules require that when a HIPAA covered entity a provider, a plan, a clearinghouse or a business associate of a covered entity uses or discloses PHI, or when it requests PHI from another covered entity or business associate, the covered entity or business associate must make "reasonable efforts to limit PHI to the minimum necessary to accomplish the intended purpose of the use, disclosure, or request." (Duane Morris LLP , 2013) Under the HIPAA Rules, covered entities and business associates are required to identify which workforce members need access to what kind of PHI to carry out their job functions. In addition under the HIPAA Rules, covered entities and business associates are required to establish protocols that define the minimum necessary amount of PHI for routine uses, disclosures and requests, and how to apply the minimum necessary standard with respect to non-routine uses, disclosures and requests. Minimum necessary violations should be investigated and, if appropriate, reported according to the new breach notification rules. Business associates may be directly liable for minimum necessary standard violations. Covered entities may be liable for business associates' minimum necessary standard violations.

Huping Zhou, a former cardiothoracic surgeon from China, whom recently moved to Los Angeles and became employed at UCLA School of Medicine as a researcher, was sentenced to federal prison for HIPAA violations. This made him the first person in the United States to receive a prison sentence for HIPAA violations. His employer informed Zhoe that they were starting the process of terminating his employment .Zhou accessed the medical records of his former colleagues that night. During the following three weeks he accessed the records of celebrities, and high-profile patients 323 times. He claimed that he was unaware that it was illegal to view these records. No evidence was found that Zhou misused the information he obtained, nor did he sell the information. He received a four month jail sentence and a 2,000 dollar fine (Dimick, 2010).

When the referring PCP or specialist office faxes the patient’s medical records, one patient’s paper medical records can unintentionally become attached to another patient’s medical records, which is an example of a HIPAA violation of unwilling negligence (Iron Mountain, 2015). This can occur when several patients are referred to a specialist at the same time, and medical records for all patients are received through one fax transmission, requiring careful examination and separation of health records. To prevent paper medical records of one patient inadvertently becoming attached to the medical records of another patient when received by fax, all pages of the health record must be reviewed upon receipt and checked for the patient’s identification

I do think that HIPAA is more compliant in regards to electronic records because from its beginning concept it was known that health data was going digital. I think because of that knowledge it has been a main focus in its development through the years. Yes, I do believe that today HIPAA does protect my personal and healthcare records more so than 5 years ago because of the January 2013 HIPAA modifications. As stated in the article, these modifications implemented changes that increased the HIPAA sanctions and enforcements to include the business associates and subcontractors of the healthcare organizations. This is important because it stated that 20% of all breaches are caused by business associates. This means that they are now held to the

With the healthcare that have changed as a result of the Hipaa privacy law, rules, and regulations. Hipaa privacy law is to protect the patient health records, and Privacy, governing access, use, and disclosure. With the privacy rule protection consistent set of standards affecting the providers, health plans. With noncompliance or penalties want to contact the authority, law enforcement.

The impact of HIPAA with adhering to rules pertaining to confidentiality and release PHI (protected health information) HIPAA rules give you new rights to know about and to control how your health information gets used. Y our healthcare provider and your insurance company have to explain how they'll use and disclose health information. You can ask for copies of all this information, and make appropriate changes to it. If someone wants to share your health information, you have to give your formal consent. You have the right to complain to HHS (health and human services) about violations of HIPAA rules. Health information is to be used only for health purposes. In HIPAA under the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information

A main key point I found interesting in this article is that HIPAA privacy regulations require covered entities to implement certain administrative,technical,and physical safeguards to protect the privacy of any

Dr. Patterson’s office called to give patient Sara Martin her results, but her husband answered and asked to relay the message. As a doctor, she cannot give out patient’s information to anyone but the patient. In this situation Dr. Patterson should explain to the husband that information can only be released to the patient and; although he is the husband she would have to sign an information release form. If this information where to get released and she did not want anyone else to know , this would be a HIPAA violation and there can be fines to pay and may lose her

While HIPAA violation are sometimes unintentional, it should be taken seriously because it is a violation of patient privacy, it can cause a lifetime of embarrassment & harm to one’s reputation, and individuals/entities can be fined and jailed for their offense. Regardless, if it is at work or home healthcare professionals should practice legal and ethical behaviors so that they can avoid HIPAA violation. As stated by Flite & Harman (2013), “Too long a coffee break and too much irrelevant conversation take away the dignity of our work, as well as being dishonest”.

Failure to follow the guidelines of HIPAA will result in termination of employment along with civil and criminal penalties. A tiered structure created for HIPAA violations. First tier for the act of unknowingly or with reasonable cause can have a fine for each violation of $100 to $50,000 and potential jail time up to one year. Second tier states they had reasonable cause but no willful neglect and a fine of $1,000 up to $50,000 for each violation. Third tier the violation was a willful act but corrected in a within a required time period with a $10,000 to $50,000 fine. Both second and third tier have potent jail time up to five years. The fourth tier violation was for personal gain and malicious

By law, the HIPAA Privacy Rule applies only to covered entities – health plans, health care clearinghouses, and certain health care providers. However, most health care providers and health plans do not carry out all of their health care activities and functions by themselves. Instead, they often use the services of a variety of other persons or businesses. The Privacy Rule allows covered providers and health plans to disclose protected health information to these “business associates” if the providers or plans obtain satisfactory assurances that the business associate will use the information only for the purposes for which it was engaged by the covered entity, will safeguard the information from misuse, and will help the covered entity comply

In the last few decades there has been an undeniable surge in the mere volume of the storage and transmission of what is known as “e-PHI,” or, electronic patient health information, and with it came an inevitable increase in data breaches. In the United States, any person or organization that interacts with this sort of data needs to do so in a way that is compliant with a set of guidelines called HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). These guidelines are essentially a set of physical, technical, and administrative controls on sensitive patient data such as health records. The biggest failing of HIPAA is that it’s static. While HIPAA itself is an