Everything You Need to Know About a HIPAA Violation
When an organization violates the guidelines established by this 1996 U.S. Federal law, it commits a HIPAA violation.
The accessing or sharing of patients’ protected health information is a common cause of HIPAA violations.
Violations, however, can also involve things like failing to train employees, keeping Hipaa record or failing to keep an eye on access logs.
In the age of digital records, HIPAA laws strive to update healthcare information. By regulating security measures around access to medical information, they outline patient data privacy requirements. There are three main rules:
- The Privacy Rule
- The Security Rule
- The Breach Notification Rule
HIPAA is managed by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The United States Congress has added to HIPAA since its introduction in 1996, most notably with the 2009 HITECH Act.
Its rules affect “covered entities”:
- Hospitals
- Insurance companies
- Healthcare clearinghouses
- Cash-only providers who don’t do business with insurance organizations,
They also affect companies that offer services to healthcare professionals who might interact with PHI.
HIPAA VIOLATION FINANCIAL AND CRIMINAL PENALTIES
It would appear unreasonable to impose a fine for an unintentional infraction with the same severity as one for willful negligence or malicious intent.
Thankfully, The OCR concurs, which is why fines and punishments are frequently case-specific and look at the motivation behind the infraction.
But there are still significant and persistent fines. OCR had paid $131,563,132.00 in civil money penalties or reached settlements in 110 instances as of April 2022.

Accidental infractions when businesses comply are punished less severely than purposeful offences that have been established.
A maximum fine of $250,000 or up to 10 years in prison are the possible penalties for the most serious infringement, which demonstrates intent to sell or utilize PHI or e-PHI for personal gain.
Are Data Breaches HIPAA Violations?
Data breaches are now an everyday occurrence. Data breaches are still likely to happen occasionally even with multi-layered cybersecurity measures.
OCR is aware that cybercriminals target healthcare businesses and that it is impossible to put in place impenetrable security barriers.
It’s not necessary to ensure that there are no data breaches in order to be HIPAA compliant. The goal of HIPAA compliance is to lower risk to a reasonable and acceptable level.
The mere fact that an organization has a data breach does not imply that a HIPAA violation caused the breach. This is now more accurately reflected in the OCR breach portal.
OCR investigates a lot of data breaches and discovers that there were no HIPAA Rules broken. As a result, there is no action done after the investigations are concluded.