HIPAA enforcement strengthened by HHS
Healthcare IT News is reporting that the US Department of Health and Human Services has issued an interim final rule to strengthen enforcement and increase penalties for violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA.
From the article:
Prior to the HITECH Act, the penalty could be no more than $100 for each violation or $25,000 for all identical violations of the same provision.
A healthcare provider, health plan or clearinghouse could also bar the secretary’s imposition of a civil money penalty by demonstrating that it did not know that it violated the HIPAA rules.
Section 13410(d) of the HITECH Act strengthened the enforcement by establishing tiered ranges of increasing minimum penalty amounts, with a maximum penalty of $1.5 million for all violations of an identical provision. A covered entity can no longer bar the imposition of a civil money penalty for an unknown violation unless it corrects the violation within 30 days of discovery.
Read the entire article here.
