By Julia Vann
When you go to the hospital, it’s because you want to be taken care of and safe. While that does mean taking good care of your health, it also means protecting your privacy and credit as well. This isn’t optional. Just recently UMass Memorial Health Care has been fined for HIPAA failures relating to not one, but two data breaches.
According to HIPAA Journal, employees from UMass Memorial Health Care copied patient information without permission. They allegedly used the information to open up credit card and cell phone accounts under the patient’s name. This is fraud.
“It was also alleged that UMass Memorial Medical Group Inc., and UMass Memorial Medical Center Inc., were both aware of employee misconduct, yet failed to properly investigate complaints related to data breaches and discipline the employees concerned in a timely manner. Both entities also failed to ensure that patients’ PHI was properly safeguarded. These failures violated Massachusetts data security laws, the Consumer Protection Act, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act” (HIPAA Journal).
Due to the negligence of those in charge, something breached the private data of patients numerous times. This is absolutely not okay.
While they seem to care about the breaches now and have made steps to improve, it doesn’t undo the damage already done. They’ll still have to pay the fine and, hopefully, going into the future, something like this will never happen again.
To learn more about HIPAA and how to protect yourself, visit the American Medical Compliance website.
