Furthermore, it is a best practice to be able to log who accesses PHI, when, and what each employee did with the protected data. Not only is this a requirement of HITECH, but it can also help you identify and eliminate risk prior to a breach actually occurring by correcting vulnerabilities and implementing policies and procedures that can lower your organization risk of a breach. We built it to include you the tools you need to train your employees, manage your vendors, and root out security risks within your organization.
Why Accountable Resources. The act also removed some ambiguity in the HIPAA law by clearing up some language of the act, working to ensure that business associates were complying with HIPAA standards and were notifying affected parties when their PHI was compromised To help encourage healthcare providers to adopt EHR technologies, the act included financial incentives for early adoption of those technologies until November 9, November 4, Is monday.
October 28, Wall of Shame. The details of the rule are beyond the scope of this article—you can read the complete text at the HHS website —but let's step through an overview of what the rule requires.
Liability for business associates. This knock-on effect has greatly expanded the reach of HIPAA regulation, and with it the market for compliance software and services more on which in a moment.
Breach notification requirements. Medical organizations and business associates must now inform individuals whose personal information has been exposed or potentially exposed by a security breach.
The standard for notification is fairly strict : companies must assume in most cases that impermissible use or disclosure of personal health information is potentially harmful and that the subject of that information must be informed about it.
Privacy and rights to data. As we noted above, all of these new rules and regulations are accompanied by a new framework of enforcement and penalties much tougher than the original one established by HIPAA. Enforcement is under the authority of HHS's Office of Civil Rights, which often prefers to resolve violations through non-punitive measures.
State Attorneys General have independent enforcement powers as well. Tougher penalties were introduced for HIPAA violations and penalties were split into different tiers based on different levels of culpability. With a much-enhanced income source, HHS was able to dedicate more resources to investigating the cause of data breaches and, in , the HHS launched the first phase of its HIPAA compliance audit program.
Under the new Breach Notification Rule, covered entities are required to issue notifications to affected individuals within sixty days of the discovery of a breach of unsecured protected health information.
The breach notification letters to patients must be sent via first class mail and must explain the nature of the breach, the types of protected health information that were exposed or compromised, the steps that are being taken to address the breach, and the actions affected individuals can take to reduce the potential for harm. Breaches of or more records also need to be reported to the HHS within 60 days of the discovery of a breach, and smaller breaches within 60 days of the end of the calendar year in which the breach occurred.
In addition to reporting the breach to the HHS, a notice of a breach of or more records must be provided to a prominent media outlet serving the state or jurisdiction affected by the breach. The Breach Notification Rule also requires business associates to notify their covered entities of a breach or HIPAA violation to allow the covered entity to report the incident to the HHS and arrange for individual notices to be sent.
Starting in October , OCR published breach summaries on its website, which includes the name of the covered entity or business associate that experienced the breach, the category of breach, the location of breached PHI, and the number of individuals affected. The HIPAA Privacy Rule gave patients and health plan members a right of access and allowed them to obtain copies of their health information by submitting a formal request. Healthcare providers that introduced EHRs were storing health information electronically.
This change made it easier for individuals to share their health data with other organizations. It also amended section b of the Act by: Striking the previous bar on the imposition of penalties if the covered entity did not know and with the exercise of reasonable diligence would not have known of the violation such violations are now punishable under the lowest tier of penalties ; and Providing a prohibition on the imposition of penalties for any violation that is corrected within a day time period, as long as the violation was not due to willful neglect.
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