Parkview Hospital Settles HIPAA Violation

Here is some news you  may not see in the local media outlets: Parkview Hospital group had a blatant HIPAA violation.

HIPAA is the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. One aspect of this law is to protect the confidentiality of health care information. You may have noticed in the last few years that there’s often HIPAA paperwork when you visit a hospital, which is designed to protect you. You may also notice that it’s now more difficult to call a hospital and learn the status of a patient, for the same reason.

This chart shows a breakdown of HIPAA violations nationwide, divided by the type of violation.From this article, it looks like Parkview paid $800,000 to the Department of Health and Human Services to settle this HIPAA violation. The article is stating that the violation occurred when 71 cardboard boxes of medical records were left on a retiring physicians driveway, where anyone could walk by and leaf through them. The boxes contained anywhere from 5000-8000 medical records.

It’s difficult to understand how one would make the decision to leave medical records on a former employees driveway.

The article does not state if the they were Indianapolis patients or Ohio patients, but if you or a family member received medical services from this provider, you may want to ask if your records were in one of those boxes.

There were 91,000 HIPAA violation complaints nationwide in the last ten years; of these, 22,000 led to settlements or fines and 521 led to criminal action. This may lead one to believe that your confidential info is not safe at hospitals, but in fact this number is very low compared to the number of times patient data is stored throughout our nation’s hospitals. Still, it’s important for hospitals to exercise due diligence both to avoid another large fine, and to learn from the mistakes of rules-violating hospitals such as Parkview.

You can trust that your confidential information is safe with Nefouse & Associates. Contact Nefouse & Associates, or call us at (800) 846-8615, and ask about how we can help your small business save money and provide better coverage.