The HIPAA penalties are very severe. Recently, Indiana based health care provider has to bear 800, 000 dollars as a fine. They were accused of breaching the confidentiality rule of HIPAA. The case due to which the company had to pay initiated back in 2009. In 2009, the company leaked the personal information of a patient. This statement is recorded by the patient himself. In this case, the doctors of the health care center were responsible.
The guilty doctor was about to retire and he asked to deliver all of his medical records. These records were in seventy one boxes. These boxes contained the medical histories of at least eight thousand patients. The problem occurred when the parcel was left at the doorsteps of the doctor. The doctor was not at home to receive the medical records. Those medical histories could have got into the wrong hands as well. No one was ready to take the responsibility of those documents. In such a highly rushed area, those highly confidential documents were ignored and this is the mistake of the doctor.
The case was filed against the Parkview Health systems. This is because of the reason that they were accountable for the records. They should have taken great care of the medical records as they have taken the responsibility to keep the confidentiality. The acting director of privacy department in OCR has issued a report. According to this report, this is a very sensitive issue and it has been highlighted by the higher authorities. In addition to that, she said that the patient’s histories is the duty of the health care centers. The data should be kept secret and protected from all unauthorized entities. Plus, it should be hand over to a very responsible person.
These privacy rules are applied to all paper work in to the digital form of data. The health care centers should hire lawyers who can keep them updated with the laws and financial consequences. Till now, the company has conducted twenty three surveys and found many problems. Violation of these rules are handled strictly by the law.