The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (“HHS OCR“) announced today that it was, for the first time, entering into a monetary HIPAA settlement for a breach involving less than 500 patients: the Hospice of North Idaho (HONI) has agreed to pay HHS OCR $50,000 to settle potential HIPAA security rule violations.
HHS OCR began its investigation after HONI reported to it that an unencrypted laptop computer containing the electronic protected health information (“ePHI”) of 441 patients had been stolen in June 2010.… More