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HIPAA Violations

By: Aeronx Mc Mall


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The private United State Health care system was the source of numerous of injustices that went unregulated since its inception. This changed in 1996 with the passing of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) 1996.

HIPPA allows access to all areas of healthcare including renewing and freedom to choose physicians. HIPPA also increases the accessibility of group insurance plans and encourages the exchange of data via electronic means. There are also allowances that help to decrease the abuse of privileged medical information to lower fraudulent activities. Other sections of the Act allow patients to access and make copies of their own medical records and be notified before their information is shared. Employees are now able to move freely from job to job without losing their medical coverage or experiencing long time of no health care coverage.

Insurance providers who were not in support of HIPPA voiced their displeasure at the privacy requirements; noting that they would put financial strain on providers while they enacted in place to comply. The law originally caused tens of thousands of privacy rule violation complaints.

As the United States continue to look for ways to keep health care affordable without completely changing the current private, profit driven insurance system, finding ways to reduce the costs of health care are an obvious place to begin. Decreasing the high prices of administrative procedures and record-keeping are the most likely targets. With HIPPA the push to move towards electronic records keeping will help medical institutions and insurance providers to cut their costs thus being able to better accept the regulations.

HIPAA Violations
Failure to meet the terms with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act can result in expensive fines and penalties. These are determined by the extent of the violation and the resulting harm that was caused.
HIPAA Violation
Minimum individual and Annual Penalty
Maximum individual and Annual Penalty
Individual did not they were committing a violation
$100 /$25,000 for repeat violations
$50,000 per violation, / $1.5 million
Occurred due to reasonable cause and not by purposeful neglect
$1,000 /$100,000 for (recurring violations)
$50,000 / $1.5 million
Occurred due to purposeful neglect but was corrected within theappointed time period
$10,000 / $250,000 (for recurring violations)
$50,000 / $1.5 million
HIPAA violation is due to purposeful neglect and is not corrected
$50,000 / $1.5 million
$50,000 / $1.5 million
Ever since HIPPA was enforced, the Office of Civil rights has resolved over 9000 violations. The most common of these was the disclosure of private health information without the patients knowledge or consent.

Insurance organizations are found to be in violation of HIPPA if they exclude pre-existing conditions for more than 12 months. They are also guilty of a violation if the insured is charged a higher premium for coverage because of their medical history, disability or other condition; of if it decreases patient benefits or services and does not notify the insured within sixty days.

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