HIPAA complaints are a less obvious way OCR enforces health privacy and security rules. Vendors, contractors and app developers must heed this customer power.

ALEXANDRIA, VA, US, May 9, 2018 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Almost 7,100 patient and employee complaints forced organizations covered by HIPAA to make changes to their operations in the five-year period spanning from Jan. 1 2013 through Dec. 31,2017, according to the latest analysis by Health Information Privacy/Security Alert.

In 2013, 3,467 complaints filed with the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) resulted in changes, according to the analysis by the independent trade newsletter. That was followed by 1,288 in 2014; 733, in 2015; 727 in 2016; and 863 in 2017.

That also included at least six resolution agreements which imposed of thousands of dollars in fines on HIPAA covered organizations.

And that is not counting the tens of thousands of actions the industry was required to take under the HITECH breach reporting and mitigation program.

“Patient complaints under HIPAA matter and have resulted in serious fines,” observed Dennis Melamed, editor and publisher of Health Information Privacy/Security Alert. “About a dozen resolution agreements in the last five years originated with complaints and resulted in meaningful fines.”

The HIPAA complaint system is just one way in which healthcare organizations are under tighter supervision than other sectors and have made more changes than many other sectors.

A fuller discussion of the less obvious ways HIPAA is being enforced will be held in a May 24 webinar: The Hidden World of OCR’s HIPAA Enforcement. In the 90-minute program, national HIPAA authorities will brief participants on the lessons learned from OCR’s complaint system, HITECH small breaches, OCR’s technical assistance program and what the rejected complaints can tell us about patient concerns about the Internet of Medical Things.

For more information and to register, visit www.melamedia.com

Katalin Sugar
Melamedia, LLC
7037045665
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