Are HIPAA Whistleblower Provisions Around the Corner?

II.HITECH Raises the Bar for Providers:

The "Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act" (HITECH) contains a number of significant privacy provisions impacting health care providers. Two of these provisions include: (1) The initiation of privacy audits by contractors working for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of Civil Rights (OCR); and (2) The sharing of Civil Monetary Penalties assessed in response to an improper breach with the affected patients.

• Privacy Audits

  As OCR has announced, the agency has initiated an audit program intended to help ensure that health care providers are complying with the various medical records privacy provisions laid out in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). To do so, OCR has contracted with several nationally-recognized audit firms for the purpose of auditing health care provider compliance with HIPAA's privacy provisions.

  When will audits begin? According to OCR, the initial audits of provider compliance with HIPAA / HITECH requirements began in November 2011. Once these initial audits are completed, OCR intends to focus the remaining audits on the issues and concerns identified in the contractors' first preliminary audits. At this time, all audits are anticipated to be completed by December 2012.

  If prior "pilot" programs are any indication of how these audits will be handled, we anticipate that OCR will ultimately adopt an ongoing audit HIPAA / HITECH process, tasked with assessing the compliance of health care providers, covered entities and business associates. It is essential that you critically review your current practices - after you have been audited, it will likely be too late to avoid the imposition of penalties.

  How will HIPAA / HITECH audits be conducted? According to OCR, organizations selected for audit will be notified by the agency of their selection. At that time, they will be asked to provide "documentation of their privacy and security compliance efforts." During this pilot period, each of the covered entities audited will receive a site visit. During the site visit, contractor representatives will be required to interview key personnel. The contractors will also review the covered entity's practices and determine whether their operations fully comply with HIPAA's / HITECH's privacy requirements. After completing the site visit, a draft report will be prepared which outlines how the audit was handled, the conclusions that were reached by the contractor and the remedial actions that were taken by the covered entity. The draft report will be shared with the covered entity prior to finalization and the covered entity will have a chance to respond to the contractor's findings.

• Sharing of Civil Monetary Penalties

  In addition to the HIPAA audit protocol discussed above, HITECH includes a seemingly-innocuous section which commands the Secretary HHS to establish a methodology to distribute a percentage of Civil Monetary Penalties to individuals harmed by an improper breach of protected health information or another HIPAA violation. For instance, if a patient's medical records or other protected health information is inappropriately accessed or divulged to unauthorized persons and the OCR ultimately investigates the violation and assesses Civil Monetary Penalties against a provider or other covered entity in connection with the breach, the harmed patient may be eligible to receive a portion of the penalties collected by the government.

  On its surface, such a clause seems reasonable - after all, why not compensate those who have been hurt by a wrongful disclosure or breach? However, this law (and its soon-to-be-created implementing regulations) will likely have extensive repercussions in reporting and enforcement of HIPAA violations. Giving patients a financial incentive to report wrongful disclosures and breaches of their protected health information will likely lead to increased reporting of incidents since harmed patients may now be eligible to share in any penalties collected. Similar laws which allow private individuals to receive a portion of penalties and other funds recovered, such as the False Claims Act (FCA), have been extremely successful in detecting and deterring fraudulent activity. While HITECH does not create a "private right of action" for HIPAA violations and is substantially different from the FCA, it is important to note that their basic principles are the same. By giving private citizens, with perhaps greater and more immediate knowledge of an issue than the government, a real reason to report a problem, these problems can be more quickly and effectively remedied.

  In 1986, when the FCA was overhauled with new provisions that gave private citizens more power and a greater likelihood of collecting money, the FCA's usage skyrocketed. In what could be a very similar situation, affected individuals with the chance to receive a portion of fines and penalties will be far more likely to aggressively report and pursue these violations. For covered entities (comprising virtually all providers, billers and business associates), this means that implementing effective HIPAA privacy policies should be at the top of your compliance "to-do" list.