What Are The Various Hipaa Violations That You Need To Be Aware Of

By Greg Garner

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) enacted in 1996 with the primary objective of providing protection to confidential information of patients. You would be surprised to know that there are thousands of intentional and unintentional violations of HIPAA that take place each year. There have also been instances of repeated violations by individuals and health care providers.

The confidential information should not be shared and viewed by anyone without the consent of the patient and there are some very strict guidelines that need to be followed for this purpose. There are specific instances when the information of patients can be shared with others and these are clearly mentioned in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and these should be followed.

If any individual or health care service provider as recognized by HIPAA does not follow these guidelines it would constitute a violation. There are various penalties that have been stipulated for HIPAA violation.

Top 3 HIPAA Violations That You Need To Know

1.

If medical information of a patient is discussed in public without their consent it would be a HIPAA violation. For instance if a health care service provider discusses the health history of a patient with his/her friends or relatives it would be a violation as per the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Similarly physicians should also not use any confidential information of patients as a medical brief without their consent.

2.

If the medical record of an individual is accessed again and again without any proper reason or authorization, it could constitute a violation. There have been instances where the medical records of individuals are accessed by employees of health insurance companies numerous times without any specific reason and authorization.

3.

Every health care provider who has access to confidential information would need to destroy all the old information of the patients in a systematic way and failure to do so is violation of HIPAA. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act stipulate that medical records should be properly shredded and destroyed so that the confidential information cannot be misused.

You would be surprised to know that medical records of celebrities and politicians are among the most violated. Most magazines would be willing to pay a lot of money on any medical information of celebrities. Due to this the medical records of celebrities are among the most accessed.

Apart from this any decision pertaining to an employee (promotions and perks) are taken based on the medical records of the person that are confidential and accessed without authority, would be discrimination and would be a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

There are also time limits set on exclusion of existing medical conditions by HIPAA and this is usually 12 months. If the established time limits are exceeded by any insurance company it would be a violation. If you find that your confidential medical information has been violated in any way, you would be able to make a complaint to the Office of Civil Rights of health and human services department.

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