After the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted in 1996, the U.S. Department of Health and Human services estimated health systems would spend about $113 million to achieve compliance — plus $14.5 million annually to remain in the green, Medical Economics reported in 2019. However, the actual yearly costs of HIPAA compliance for institutions may be closer to $8.3 billion.

Our team participates in the HCCA/SCCE Corporate Compliance & Ethics Week in honor of our clients—the healthcare compliance teams across the country that combine the power of artificial intelligence with their great expertise and leadership to ensure a culture of compliance throughout their organizations. These professionals ensure their institutions work efficiently, reduce risk, and maintain the trust of patients who seek care within their hospitals and health systems. Our team at Protenus will be celebrating these professionals in a number of ways throughout Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week.

The team at Protenus appreciates all of the work the healthcare community has done to respond to the COVID-19 health crisis. To help our customers and their colleagues, we have compiled a list of helpful resources. 

As a Privacy Officer with more than 30 years experience working in both large and small healthcare organizations, I’ve experienced multiple privacy postures, ranging from manual reactive audits to proactive privacy monitoring that allowed us to get ahead of breaches to patient privacy before they became catastrophic for the organization or patients. After three decades of experience, I realized that there are three things that every Privacy Officer should know to ensure they are applying best practices for privacy within their organization.

In 2015 and 2016, Protenus found that the privacy of professional athletes’ medical records was violated equal to or more than any other VIP or celebrity category. The majority of these privacy violators were repeat offenders. Why? In many cases, Protenus found that football enthusiasts were looking for a competitive edge in their fantasy league by looking at the athlete's records to identify injuries or other types of vulnerabilities.