Real-World HIPAA Violations That Led to Jail Sentences

Описание: There are 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States. They spend their days behind bars, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and referring by their prisoner number until they’ve fully served their sentence because of a crime that they committed.

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Believe it or not some of the prisoners among those incarcerated in the United States were once healthcare professionals.

If you’re required to follow HIPAA because of where you work and you commit a violation, the OCR’s penalty could extend to you.

For this video I’m going to break down instances where you won’t go to jail and cases where you will go.

First, let’s talk about scenarios where you won’t go to jail if you violate HIPAA.

The reality is that the average number of breaches per day that affect 500 records or more is 1.76.

Why is the cutoff for that statistic 500?

Although the OCR requires organizations to report all HIPAA violations to them, they only make the list of those that affect 500 or more public.

They don’t make the smaller breaches public for two main reasons.

First, the OCR only requires that organizations report these to them on an annual basis, no later than 60 days into the next calendar year. For those breaches that affected 500 or more records, the OCR mandates that the organization involved report what happened “without reasonable delay and in no case later than 60 calendar days from the discovery...”

Second, it’s because smaller breaches happen so often.

No national news outlet is going to cover a story of a doctor gossiping about their patient to someone who wasn’t authorized. Although gossiping is one of the leading causes of a HIPAA violation, it usually only affects a small number of patients.

I’m not trying to dismay the severity of that type of behavior, it’s still inappropriate.

However, it’s not an action where that’s going to get you sentenced to “the big house”. You could lose your job, though.

The OCR does define criminal penalities for HIPAA violations. The OCR uses these predefined tiers to make it easier for them to give judgment.
Going to jail for a HIPAA violation doesn’t happen often, it only happens in rare cases. Whether you go or not largely depends on your motive behind what you did and whether or not you knew that what you were doing was wrong.

Violations that have happened in the past where the individual who committed it received a jail sentence include: an IT employee who downloaded PHI from their former employer to sell it on the dark web to make a quick buck, lying to federal investigators while fraudulently handling grant money meant to prescribe drugs for personal gain, and logging into an employers system to steal patient financial information to use for personal purchases.

Although going to jail for a HIPAA violation is rare, it does happen. In order to get a prison sentence, you would have to do something PRIT TY malicious.

If you caused a violation that’s more minor, you probably won’t go to jail...although you might lose your job or receive some sort of repercussion from your employer.

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