The Privacy Rule does not require you to eliminate all incidental disclosures. The Privacy Rule recognizes that it is not practicable to eliminate all risk of incidental disclosures. In August 2002, specific modifications to the Rule were adopted to clarify that incidental disclosures do not violate the Privacy Rule when you have policies which reasonably safeguard and appropriately limit how protected health information is used and disclosed.
Category: HIPAA / HITECH Enforcement
Largest Settlement Agreement to Date Assessed by the OCR
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has assessed the largest settlement amount to date against Advocate Health Care Network . The OCR fined Advocate $ 5.55 Million for multiple potential violations of the HIPAA Security Rule.
The investigations that eventually led to the fine were initiated in 2013 after three successive self-reported data breaches by Advocate. Two of the three were related to a Business Associate of Advocate. OCR stated, “This significant settlement, the largest to-date against a single entity, is a result of the extent and duration of the alleged noncompliance (dating back to the inception of the Security Rule in some instances), the involvement of the State Attorney General in a corresponding investigation, and the large number of individuals whose information was affected by Advocate, one of the largest health systems in the country.”
The press release and a link to the settlement agreement can be found here. Note that the link to the source document, the settlement agreement itself, stopped functioning a few hours after the press release went out. Please see: http://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2016/08/04/advocate-health-care-settles-potential-hipaa-penalties-555-million.html
This settlement reinforces the importance of including all of an organization’s PHI in its risk analysis process, and a review and inclusion of all Business Associates and Business Associate Agreements.
RISC Management and Consulting 
You must be logged in to post a comment.