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Home Health & Hospice Week

Compliance:

Are You Vulnerable To This HIPAA Violation?

Published on Tue Mar 08, 2011

If your staff carries paper PHI offsite, implement these proactive strategies. HIPAA enforcement is heating up, and you don't want to end up forking over a million-dollar fine due to an accidental breach. Home care providers can learn from the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR)'s recent $1 million fine to the General Hospital Corporation and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization Inc. in Boston over an incident where a Mass General employee left files on a subway train that were never recovered (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XX, No. 9, p. 68). What happened: According to the medical center's resolution agreement with OCR, an employee "while commuting to work on the subway ... removed the documents containing PHI from her bag and placed them on the seat beside her. The documents were not in an envelope and were bound with a rubber band. Upon exiting the train, the ... employee left the [...]
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