HIPAA compliance is an attitude that a dental practice needs to imbibe in daily operations so that it can protect and uphold the privacy, integrity, and security of customer data and information.
The staff of the dental practice also needs to comply with policies and guidelines. HIPAA violations imply sanctions as per HIPAA’s Privacy Rule and Security Rule.
It must be noted that all data breaches might not constitute HIPAA violations. A data breach triggered due to an ineffective or incomplete HIPAA compliance program or a breach in direct violation of the HIPAA policy constitutes a HIPAA violation.
Hence, a dental practice that has stringent compliance programs in place and conducts regular training for the staff must levy penalties on the staff who violate the policies of the practice. This can be useful in creating a discipline of being HIPAA compliant.
An incident that causes protected health information or PHI to be wrongfully obtained, protected, viewed, or shared can result in HIPPA violations. The legitimacy and extent of the violation also depend if the data breach happened willfully or inadvertently. A violation can happen due to non-compliance and if there is doubt of a violation or non-compliance, the OCR or Office for Civil Rights can conduct an audit after notifying the practice.
Hence, every practice must be aware that they are subject to privacy rules and they need to comply with HIPAA regulations. The staff must also be trained to recognize risks and follow security protocols so that PHI is not left vulnerable to a potential breach.
There are 4 four categories of HIPAA violations outlined by the US Department of Health and Human Services) and the OCR. The first and second categories are for covered entities. The first category is for a practice that is unaware of the HIPAA violation even after due diligence is done. A second category violation indicates that the practice is aware of a violation after due diligence is done.
The third and fourth categories are violations that arise out of willful neglect. The third category of violation is when a practice adopts corrective measures within 30 days. The fourth category is when a practice has not implemented corrective measures even after 30 days since the breach was discovered.
There are multiple consequences that a practice can face as a result of HIPAA violations:
Civil Penalties are usually issued to practices under the first two categories as mentioned above by the OCR for any HIPAA violation and are not restricted to data breaches.
The penalties for HIPAA violations start at USD 137 per violation if a practice is unaware of the breach. It can escalate to over USD 1.5 million when a violation is due to willful neglect and no corrective measures have been deployed in 30 days.
Criminal penalties in HIPAA can be charged if a dental practice or an employee consciously acquires access to PHI through illegal or unauthorized methods. Both employees and practices can be fined for knowingly and wrongfully disclosing individually identifiable health information without authorization in case a criminal charge is declared by the OCR.
To prevent a HIPAA violation, a practice must be prepared for an audit. It must have policies to address areas of concern. It has to regularly perform a comprehensive risk analysis. It has to conduct regular training of employees.
The practice must ensure that business partners must have contracts that specify HIPAA compliance.
The practice needs to store PHI with care and how it gets accessed. There has to be a policy to ensure that the PHI is adequately safeguarded at all times.
HIPAA rules and guidelines need to be taken seriously as they hold stern consequences when they are violated. The dental team needs to be always aware and updated on HIPAA guidelines and the consequences they carry. This can ensure that the practice does not face undesirable situations. Under any circumstances, the practice must maintain the confidentiality of patient data and ensure that the data does not fall into the wrong hands.
