Last year was a record-setting year for HIPAA enforcement.  On HHS’s website, OCR has touted its 2018 enforcement:

OCR has concluded an all-time record year in HIPAA enforcement activity.  In 2018, OCR settled 10 cases and secured one judgment, together totaling $28.7 million. This total surpassed the previous record of $23.5 million from 2016 by 22 percent.  In addition, OCR also achieved the single largest individual HIPAA settlement in history of $16 million with Anthem, Inc., representing a nearly three-fold increase over the previous record settlement of $5.5 million in 2016.

Here is an overview of the resolution agreements and enforcement actions with civil monetary penalties from 2018:

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Pagosa Springs Medical Center (PSMC) has agreed to pay $111,400 to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for an alleged violation of HIPAA. OCR found that the company failed to deactivate a former employee’s access to a web-based calendar that contained the protected health information (PHI) of 557 patients.  The company also failed to obtain a business associate agreement (BAA) with the calendar company (Google).

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Advanced Care Hospitalists PL (ACH) has agreed to pay $500,000 to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for an alleged violation of HIPAA. OCR found that the company shared protected health information (PHI) with an unknown vendor without a business associate agreement (BAA).  According to the Resolution Agreement, “ACH impermissibly disclosed the PHI of 9,255 of its patients to a third party for billing processing services without the protections of a business associate agreement in place.”  The PHI later turned up on the vendor’s website.

This was clearly an unforced error in compliance — and an expensive one!   So easy to avoid too!  Providing PHI to a vendor without a business associate agreement is like going to work without your clothes on.  Vendor management is incredibly important, and organizations that fail to have proper agreements with their vendors that receive personal data are often punished severely by many privacy laws beyond HIPAA. The GDPR requires vendor agreements, and the FTC has found that companies engage in an unfair practice under the FTC Act Section 5 when they lack an adequate vendor agreement.

The main lesson from most privacy enforcement cases, whether HIPAA or otherwise: Do the basics! So many cases involve failing to do obvious things.  There’s not much muddy ground in the land of enforcement.

The press release can be viewed here.  The Resolution Agreement can be viewed here.

Also of Interest Regarding HIPAA

HIPAA Enforcement Guide

HIPAA Training Guide

HIPAA Enforcement 2017: Another Big Year for HIPAA Enforcement

Why Is HIPAA Data Breach Enforcement Increasing? An Insurer’s View from Katherine Keefe

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