While it is important to comply with all of the mandates of the Omnibus Rule, I think it is instructive to know from where the most vulnerable areas of breach of PHI arise.
In a recent presentation to a limited number of attorneys in which I participated, an investigator for the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) advised that with respect to breach notification of major HIPAA breaches (those in which the PHI of 500+ individuals had been disclosed), as of February 27, 2015, OCR’s records indicate that the following were the percentages attributable to the types of breaches:
- Theft 51%
- Unauthorized Access/Disclosure 19%
- Loss 9%
- Hacking /IT Incident 7%
- Improper Disposal 4%
- Other 9%
- Unknown 1%
