HIPAA Breach Evaluation and Reporting - What Qualifies as a Reportable Breach and how to Report It - Webinar (Recorded)

Why Should You Attend:

The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule has been in effect since 2010 and was significantly modified in 2013. We will discuss the origins of the rule and how it works, including interactions with other HIPAA rules and penalties for violations.

Whenever there may be a privacy issue involving Protected Health Information, there may be a reportable breach under the HIPAA regulations. Not all privacy violations are reportable breaches, though, so it is essential to have a good process for evaluating incidents to see if they have resulted in a reportable breach.

Any privacy rule violation that results in an acquisition, access, use, or disclosure of PHI in violation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule may be a breach, unless the incident is one of the defined exceptions from the definition. A breach is reportable unless the information was secured or destroyed in the incident, or unless a risk analysis shows that there is a low probability of compromise of the information, based on at least four factors defined in the rules.

We will examine how to determine if a privacy violation is potentially a breach according to the definition, and then describe the subsequent steps in the evaluation, if it is determined that the definition has been met. We will discuss the exceptions to the breach definition for inadvertent internal uses, or when it can be determined that the information could not be retained in any way by the receiving party.

Entities can avoid notification if the information has been encrypted according to Federal standards. We will cover the guidance from the US Department of Health and Human Services that shows how to encrypt so as to prevent the need for notification in the event of lost data. Failing that, a risk analysis can be conducted to determine the probability of compromise of the information, considering four factors: what the data is and how well-identified it is, to whom was it released and do they have obligations to protect the information, whether or not the information actually exposed, and whether or not the incident has been mitigated properly. However, it must be noted that any compromise of the information by Ransomware that denies access or control of your information should be treated as a reportable breach.

In addition, any reporting must be made within the required time frames, or penalties can result, as shown in recent enforcement actions by HHS for late reporting of breaches.

We will help you understand what isn’t a breach and under what circumstances you don’t have to consider breach notification. You’ll find out how to report the smaller breaches (less than 500 individuals), and you’ll know why you want to avoid a breach involving more than 500 individuals - media notices, Web site notices, and immediate notification of HHS, including posting on the HHS breach notification “wall of shame” on the Web.

We will explain, based on historical analysis of reported breaches, what measures must be taken today to protect information from the most common threats, as well as discuss information security trends and explain what kinds of efforts will need to be undertaken in the future to protect the security of PHI.