Four years after the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) patient privacy rules went into effect, the federal government has found almost no examples of violations “in the context of fundraising efforts,” said the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP) last week.
The Department of Health and Human Services said in a recent letter to AHP president and CEO William McGinly that since the privacy rule’s April 14, 2003, effective date, a total of 27,070 complaints that allege violations of the HIPAA rule have been received by the agency’s Office for Civil Rights); however, practically none involve fundraising.
“While OCR’s complaint system does not specifically track complaints dealing with philanthropic activities, anecdotal information from OCR’s regional investigative offices suggest that a very small number of complaints involve allegations that protected health information has been misused in the context of fundraising efforts by covered entities,” an HHS official told AHP. Read the press release.
