Posts Tagged ‘HIPAA violation’
ORC Report to Congress: HIPAA Complaints Skyrocket
Between 2017 and 2021, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) complaint violations rose 39 percent and large breaches reported increased 58 percent, according to a recent report from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to Congress. We have been writing about these complaints and settlements since 2019. OCR received 34,077 new HIPAAcomplaints alleging violations…
Read MoreClinical Lab Settles HIPAA Violation Case
A Georgia-based clinical laboratory recently agreed to pay $25,000 to The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule. That rule establishes national standards to protect individuals’ electronic personal health information (PHI) that…
Read MoreHIPAA Violations Result in More Than Fines: Beware of Jail Time
Late last month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that a 62-year-old woman would be spending a year behind bars after being convicted of disclosing the health information of two people “with the intent to cause them embarrassment and mental distress.†Linda Sue Kalina worked from March 7, 2016 through June 23, 2017 as a…
Read MoreHospital Employees Fired for Celebrity Snooping
You’ve heard the saying “curiosity killed the cat,†well in the case of dozens of hospital employees, curiosity may have killed their careers. Earlier this month, Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital fired dozens of employees who allegedly accessed the medical records of actor Jussie Smollett without authorization, according to numerous published reports. The Empire actor was…
Read MoreHow an Innocent Social Media Post Can Turn Into a HIPAA Violation
A Texas nurse recently learned that you don’t have to identify a patient by name to violate Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) rules. According to a number of published reports, the unidentified woman, who worked as an ICU/ER nurse, was fired from her job with Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston after posting about…
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