With this last business year coming to an end, so does the calculations of HIPAA violations and fines. Around $28,683,400 fines concluded the past business year. This beats last year by 22. HIPAA enforcement for this coming year will not be lighting up according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Some of the companies that these fines affected included; Cottage Health, Pagosa Springs, and Anthem Inc, having the highest settlements in 2018. OCR settlements that equalled up to $28,683,400 in violation fines to the HIPAA enforcement were because of 10 companies. In February 2018 Cottage Health Settles had the highest violation ranking in at approximately $3 million. Breaches in patients data caused violations to occur.
Further more, each tier of penalties has its own fines and qualifications that it has to meet. The first tier or violation is where the entity did not know about a breach in information or could not reasonably have known. The second tier is where the entity “knew, or by exercising reasonable diligence would have known” of the breach or violation, they did not act with willful neglect. The third tier is the entity willfully neglected regulations and it was soon corrected. Lastly, the fourth tier is where the entity acted with willful neglect and did not correct it in a timely manner. The fines for the incidents rang from $100 to $1.5 million according to Compliancy-group.com
As a result fines can rack up over time and cause issues for your company. It is important to keep up to date with current rules and regulations regarding compliancy. For more information about these topics, check out the links below.
