Thomas qaagree to $750k settlement for HIPAA violations. These days it is very often that we heard about the hospital or medical practice was fined by the Health and the Human Service(HHS) due to the breach of the patient data. The security breaches of HIPAA mainly concerned with bad IT system design, bad user behavior, bad policies and bad operations. The US department of Health and Human Services(HHS) office for civil rights is trying to enforce HIPAA rules on hospital or medical practices to protect the patient data. There was a hospital in the Texas called Thomas, that was fined with an amount of $75000 due to the two breaches that were happened at the hospital. With these two breaches total 81 patients were suffered. The breaches were …show more content…
The HHS was conducting investigation on the clinic about these complaints from the patients. The hospital system also moved all its clinics to the new building called the stratus building. They also replaced all the systems with the new systems that support for the Cerner live. One of the contractors from the IT deployed the new computer to the clinic and he pick up the old computer from the clinic and come to the office and put the computer on the shelf where the junk computer was placed. The contractor forgot to fill up the disposal instructions for the computer. The student interns already requested the environmental services to pick up the old computers from the shelf. The environmental services person pick up all computers on the shelf along with the computer from the clinic. This computer contained the medical data of the patient relating to 76 patients. The environmental services had contract with the third party. They sold all this junk computers to the third party with some cost. This time also they sell all their junk to the third party. This time the breach was occurred due to the improper disposal of the hardware and the negligence of the IT employee. With this second breach of the HIPAA violation the HHS imposed $50k fine on the clinic and the hospital administration fired the employee and HHS imposed a fine of $10k on the
Overview of the case: In Dixon, a woman named Rita Crundwell committed fraud at City Hall. She stole around $53 million from the city’s funds and was kept hidden for a long time until a whistleblower, Kathe Swanson, exposed her crime. After 20 years of committing this embezzlement, the people of Dixon were demanding a change of government for not taking responsibility for the money that was not in the right hands.
Harris’s responsibility was to provide refunds to patients. After investigating, they noticed that many patients hadn’t received their refunds. The investigator said that over the past years she had embezzled more than $800,000. Harris’s responsibility was to provide refunds to patient’s. Surprisingly,
I agree with you, Dr. Zhou should have clear understanding of the HIPAA law, that is part of orientation practice for everyone who has access to patient information in the health care field. For Dr. Zhou to access the patient electronic records after his termination is very alarming. Everyone agrees that his plea deal of $2000 of fine and four months in prison was a lesser punishment than what he deserves. According the HIPAA law he could spent more than 10 years in prison for his action .What is your thoughts. Don’t you think UCLA should have been liable for failing to protect the patient information.
Hospital Employee received 18 months in jail for HIPAA Violations On February 24, 2015, 30 years old Joshua Hippler, was found guilty for convicting HIPPA Violation and has been sentenced to serve 18 months in jail. Hippler was a former employee at East Texas hospital where he was alleged to have accessed to Protected Health Information. But instead he was intentionally selling patient’s information for his own personal gain. Hippler was indicted by a federal grand jury on Mar. 26, 2014 and the case was heard by United States Magistrate Judge John D. Love on August 28, 2014.
COMES NOW R. Mark Armstrong, pro se (“Plaintiff”), and hereby files a Complaint and Demand for Jury Trial. The causes of action include but are not limited to: 1) Qua Tam (Claims A, B and C) Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) (1972) [33 U.S.C. § 1367] : Solid Waste Disposal Act (SWDA) (1976) [42 U.S.C. § 6971] : FCA, 31 U.S.C. 3730(b)-(g) 2)Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”) 18 U.S.C. §1961 et seq., 3) Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 (Claim A) First Amendment as controlled by Garcetti_v._Ceballos Violations, (Claim B) Fourteenth Amendment Violations, 4) Retaliation under 31 U.S.C. § 3730(h), 5) Intentional infliction of emotional distress, for prima facie tort Tortuous Breach of Implied Covenant
The breach I found was from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee on October 2, 2009. This case was the largest breach incident as of October 2009 under the HITECH breach notification rule. The breach affected more than 1 million individuals. HIPAA privacy and security rules were breached. Security evaluations and physical safeguards are required under the HIPAA security rule.
Since HIPAA become mandatory on most of the health care organization, patient information is more secure compared to previous. Health care organization are investing huge amount of fund for safety measures to protect the patient information and i think this is the main concern in today's advanced health care
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in the year 1996. As a broad Congressional attempt at healthcare reform HIPAA was first introduced into Congress as the Kennedy-Kassebaum Bill named after two of its leading sponsors. The law has several different purposes that mainly focus on the protection of the healthcare provider and their patient depending on the circumstances and situations that may typically occur in a medical environment. The act itself was passed with two main objectives.
DATE: December 19, 2016 TO: New Employee FROM: Jessica Cionca SUBJECT: What to Avoid When Facing a Consistent Issue in the Healthcare Setting Summary: Given below is what to except as a new employee in the healthcare system as a Registration Representative. There are many positive benefits when working in the hospital, but there are several issues that could potentially terminate any employee.
(September 30, 2013) - The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published amended rules applicable to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 in January 2013. As explained by the Secretary of HHS, healthcare has experienced significant changes since HIPAA was enacted in 1996. The implementation of electronic medical records is just one of those changes. The new HIPAA regulations are designed to provide patients with better privacy protection, and additional rights not included in the original HIPAA rules.
Nurses and doctors take the oath to protect the privacy and the confidentiality of patients. Patients and their medical conditions should not be discussed with anyone who is not treating the patient. Electronic health records are held to the same standards as nurses in that information is to be kept between, and shared only with the immediate care team. HIPAA violations are not taken lightly nor are the violation fines cheap. Depending on the violation, a hospital can be fined from $100 to $50,000 per violation (National Nurse 2011 p 23).
Information security considered as the procedure of protecting information against unauthorized access, disclosure, disruption, modification, use, or destroyed. In other word information security include defending information whatever the form this data may take. Although each organization employ information security to protect its secret data, but security breaches or identity theft may take place, security breach mean illegal access to defined categories of personal information. In other word it mean illegal access to personal information to use, destroy or amend it (Cate, 2008, p.4).
Unfortunately HIPAA violations happen every year in our country. In fact, a situation happened in a New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center on May 7th 2010. The HIPAA violation happened after the electronic health records of 6,800 patients ended up on Google for the world to see. The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who are responsible for HIPAA enforcement laws deeply investigated this case. It was discovered that a Columbia University physician who developed applications for New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University, attempted to deactivate a personally owned computer server on the network containing electronic protected health information (ePHI).
As records were shared electronically rules were implemented for clinicians to follow known as The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 (Summary of the HIPAA Security Rule ,2013). These rules were implemented for clinicians to protect the
According to Furrow et al. (2013), when healthcare organizations and providers fail to comply with HIPAA rules it can result in civil and criminal penalties. The AARA created a structure of four tiers of civil penalties for HIPAA violations, which the Secretary of the DHHS has discretion in determining the penalty. For example, tier 1 penalties apply to violations due to reasonable cause and not due to willful neglect. In other words, the healthcare organization is unaware of the HIPAA violation.