August 2003

HIPAA Compliance taking hold

At its National Committee on Health and Vital Statistics meeting in June, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) discussed HIPAA compliance and complaints that have come in since the April 14 deadline for compliance.

To date, HHS reports 637 complaints, 124 of which have been investigated and closed. There are still 513 open cases, with 260 accepted for further investigation. Some cases have been closed because complaints have been about actions that occurred prior to April 14 or don’t state an actual violation. HHS does not investigate complaints about an activity not prohibited by the privacy rule, or against an entity not subject to the rule. These are marked closed, since HHS does not have any jurisdiction.

“The kind of complaints that we are accepting and seeing are things like individuals alleging they were denied access to their records,” said Stephanie Kaminsky, Office for Civil Rights (OCR). “Individuals allege inadequate safeguards, or inadequate minimum necessary procedures in various types of offices, usually provider offices that you are visiting in the reception area or the treatment areas of the facilities.”

Kaminsky also noted that there have been a large number of complaints in which individuals allege they did not receive notice, or it was not posted. In addition, there have been a percentage of complaints that have come from insiders in organizations, alleging that their offices were not in compliance.

Since April 1, OCR has received 5,000 calls from individuals wanting information on how to be in compliance. In addition, the HIPAA frequently-asked-questions section of the HHS Web site is the most frequently hit page on the site, with over 750,000 hits in the last several months.

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