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 causes/circumstances for those breaches:
- Paper records 22%
- Laptop 21%
- Desktop computer 12%
- Network server 12%
- Portable Electronic device 11%
- Email 7%
- EMR 4%
- Other 11%
