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Feds to boost fines for health data breaches

Breaches of health data security, such as recent episodes involving missing laptops or storage devices at Kaiser Permanente and Health Net, could be subject to tougher federal regulations by mid-February — including up to $1.5 million in fines for privacy violations.

New federal mandates “make it much more risky to be non-compliant,” said Glen Day, a Booz Allen Hamilton consulting principal based in Los Angeles.

Day said the new federal guidelines are on top of California’s own privacy rules, which are among the strictest in the nation. Under regulations attached to the federal stimulus package, if a health care organization suffers a breach involving more than 500 records, it has to inform enrollees about the incident through the media. Any breach of 500 or more records can be recorded on the U.S. Health and Human Services’ web site, Day said.

“We’ve been working on it ever since (last February),” said Scott Morgan, a Kaiser executive director and national privacy and security compliance officer. Read More >

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