HHS Publishes HIPAA Enforcement Plan
[Posted 04/21/05]

Enforcement of the security rule—like the privacy rule—will be complaint-driven, according to a proposed rule published this week in the Federal Register. The proposed rule also protects whistleblowers from retaliation or intimidation.

A warning for those of you who think HIPAA has no “teeth” and isn’t being enforced: Since the HIPAA privacy rule took effect in April 2003, more than 175 alleged privacy violations have been referred to the Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution. While that number represents a small fraction of the nearly 11,000 complaints made during that same time period, there’s no reason to put your practice at risk.To protect your practice from civil or criminal liability, it is very important that you keep thorough privacy and security compliance records. Detailed information on keeping such records is available in the CMA/PrivaPlan HIPAA Compliance Toolkit on CD-ROM. (Click here for more information on the toolkit and other HIPAA resources from CMA.)For more HIPAA information visit the HIPAA Help Center.

Contact: CMA’s legal information line, 415/882-5144 or legalinfo@cmanet.org.