Cases of-HIPAA Violation

Cases of HIPAA Violation
Name
Institution

Cases of HIPAA Violation
Health Insurance and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was established in 1996. Its primary objective is to address the employees’ health insurance coverage in an occurrence of a loss of a job. The policies that govern the Act ensure that the privacy and confidentiality of an individual’s health information are protected. HIPAA has served different people. However, the Act has faced violations from the health care especially with the leakage of patient’s health information.
Examples of HIPAA Violation
Examples of HIPAA violation include cases where health facility releases unauthorized health information is not allowed by the HIPAA. However, some of the health providers have been found with the offense of issuing the wrong document to the public without approval. Failure to release information to the patients has been identified as a commonly committed violation (Sterling, 2015). It reduces the patient’s accessibility to services available in a given health facility. The patients have the right to access information regarding health issues, disease outbreaks, and ways of keeping themselves safe from infections. Most of the cases identified involved exposure of the patient’s private records. The situation regularly occurs through leakage of patient’s information on the internet.
Case 1
An example of the violation of HIPAA regulations is the case of the New York-Presbyterian (NYP) Hospital. The electronic protected information leaked through the Google in 2010.

The situation called for the attention of both civil rights and the HIPAA enforcement personnel. It is against the HIPAA rules to expose a patient’s information and records across the internet (Puranik, 2017). The case that occurred in the hospital had resulted from careless management by health record managers. The entities identified the breach after receiving the complaint from an individual who had viewed the electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) of their deceased relative who was a former NYP patient. Such incidences occur due to lack of adequate security, server deactivation which results in ePHI access through the internet (Puranik, 2017). The hospitals were fined for neglect to protect the patients’ records.
Penalty
The facility was fined by the HIPAA for violating the laws. The facility had to pay for violating the rules that should be closely monitored as far as by both staff and the management. The penalty involved a payment of $3.3 million. Thus, it is critical for management to review regulations outlined in HIPAA. For instance, the Optical Character Reader (OCR) levied $25.1 million fines on the healthcare entities, and this was due to willful neglect and failing to protect its patient’s record.
HIPAA Violation
HIPAA violations occurred through leakage of information to the public. There was a need for the facility to restrict the staff members from accessing the database containing the patient’s health information. Therefore, the facilities’ management should review the regulations outlined in HIPAA.
HIPAA Analysis Violation
The NYP violated HIPAA provisions by failing to protect the patients’ information. Furthermore, it had failed to implement strict measures and adopt the method of securing electronic systems. Based on HIPAA analysis the facility should have controlled its data by monitoring key aspects regarding to security.
Case 2
St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Centre Inc. exposed the patients’ privacy. The staffs of the hospital had faxed the protected health information to individuals’ employer. The information in fax was private and sensitive to be exposed to a third person. Such information included the HIV status and patient’s sexual orientation. The hospital should have faxed the health information letter to the personal address. HIPAA rules require protection of health information at all times (Terry, 2015). Therefore, St. Luke’s failed to address such vulnerabilities in the compliance standards.
HIPAA Violation
The facility violated the HIPAA regulations by sending the patient’s private information to the third party. HIPAA provides that the health records should be secured from the third parties. Furthermore, the health provider should ensure that essential precautions are taken to protect leakage of the patients’ information. St. Luke’s’ violated the HIPAA rules by sending the private health information to the employer.
HIPAA Analysis
The hospital had to pay an OCR fine of $ 387,200 and asked to adopt a corrective action plan for reducing cases of impressible disclosures. Once the payment had been made, the OCR required the hospital to review HIPAA requirement. The facility should upgrade its employees’ skills to ensure that they develop an effective method of safeguarding health information (Pickering, 2003). Safeguarding different communication privacy is crucial while dealing with the patient’s private addresses. The provider should have asked the patients for their personal addresses instead of the employer’s. Furthermore, the health record management should always observe ethical principles in serving the patients, private issues such as HIV status should not be provided to somebody else apart from the patients. Negligence contributed to the step of sending the health information to the employer. The employers are often provided with basic skills of protecting the patients’ information.
Penalty
The health provider was fined and warned against future cases of negligence. It was asked to establish effective action plans to avoid future cases of negligence. The facility’s operations were limited for a period of time to ensure that it trained its employees on how to keep the patient’s information as private entities.
Ways in Which the Hospitals can Prevent Violation
The health providers should secure the patient’s records. Security features to health record data should be regularly accessed to ensure that they are valid to reduce cases of information leakage. The employees should be introduced to the HIPAA privacy details to ensure the management can restrict its staff from leaking patient’s information.

References
Pickering, C.F. (2003). HIPAA Privacy and Security: Developing a Culture of Privacy. Journal Of Controversial Medical Claims, 10(3), 14-21.
Puranik, M. (2017). HIPAA-compliant cloud, simplified. Health management Technology, 38(11),20
Sterling, R. (2015). How to defend your practice against HIPAA violations. Ophthalmology Times, 40(15), 71-75.
Terry, K. (2015). HIPAA Breach Secure data, prevent fines–here’s how. Ophthalmology Times, 40(17), 70-74.