Posted by: Robert Markette
July 18, 2008
Topic: HIPAA - Privacy

Some of you may recall the incident involving Providence Health and Services out of Seattle.  This was a HIPAA breach in 2005 involving the loss of EPHI of over 386,000 patients.  Well, the Office of Civil Rights has resolved the HIPAA complaints it received and this case is noteworthy for two reasons.

First, OCR resolved this with a written Resolution Agreement.  Although OCR has required covered entities to take corrective action in the past, this is the first time a complaint has been resolved with a resolution agreement.  The resolution agreement includes a requirement for a corrective action plan that includes a number of minimum requirements.  (More on that after I have a chance to read it.)

 More importantly, OCR required Providence to pay $100,000 as part of the resolution.  This is the first case in which a monetary penalty has been imposed that I can recall.  

Granted, this was an especially egregious case (not necessarily for the why, but for the size of the disclosure), but now that they have used a Resolution Agreement and required a penalty, I think we will see more of this type of enforcement.  I always told clients and trade groups that they will make an example of a provider and this may be the example.

This breach involved a home care and hospice company, which means home health and hospice providers should consider what happened to Providence and how it happened and be sure to take precautions to prevent a similar incident.   

For those of you who are interested, I am attaching a copy of the resolution agreement. 

Attachments:
agreement.pdf

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