Under the HHS resolution agreement, Phoenix Cardiac Surgery has agreed to pay a $100,000 settlement amount and a corrective action plan (CAP) that includes a review of recently developed policies and other actions taken to come into full compliance with the Privacy and Security Rules.
OCR’s investigation found that the physician practice was posting clinical and surgical appointments for their patients on an Internet-based calendar that was publicly accessible.
In addition, Phoenix Cardiac Surgery had implemented few policies and procedures to comply with the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, and had limited safeguards in place to protect patients’ electronic health information (ePHI).
OCR’s investigation also revealed the following issues:
- Phoenix Cardiac Surgery failed to implement adequate policies and procedures to appropriately safeguard patient information;
- Phoenix Cardiac Surgery failed to document that it trained any employees on its policies and procedures on the Privacy and Security Rules;
- Phoenix Cardiac Surgery failed to identify a security official (such as a HIPAA Security Officer)
- Phoenix Cardiac Surgery failed to conduct a risk analysis; and
- Phoenix Cardiac Surgery failed to obtain business associate agreements with Internet-based email and calendar services where the provision of the service included storage of and access to its ePHI.
The HHS Resolution Agreement can be found at http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/enforcement/examples/pcsurgery_agreement.pdf
This posting is sponsored by RISC Management & Consulting, www.RISCsecurity.com
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