According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights, nearly 200 medical locations had HIPAA data breaches affecting 500 or more individuals each. All of these incidents were a result of Hacking/IT incident in a variety of ways such as: network server, email, desktop computers, laptops, portable electronic devices, and electronic medical records.
As required by section 13402(e)(4) of the HITECH Act, the Secretary must post a list of breaches of unsecured protected health information affecting 500 or more individuals. These breaches are now posted in a new, more accessible format that allows users to search and sort the posted breaches. Additionally, this new format includes brief summaries of the breach cases that OCR has investigated and closed, as well as the names of private practice providers who have reported breaches of unsecured protected health information to the Secretary. These breaches have to be reported to the Secretary.
The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule, 45 CFR §§ 164.400-414, requires HIPAA covered entities and their business associates to provide notification following a breach of unsecured protected health information. Similar breach notification provisions implemented and enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), apply to vendors of personal health records and their third party service providers, pursuant to section 13407 of the HITECH Act.
Let’s say your medical location was affected by the Anthem HIPAA data breach affecting, how did you notify your customers at regular intervals? With AlertOps there is multiple ways to notify you; although we can’t stop a HIPAA data breach from happening we can ensure that you receive the proper notifications to manage the service levels. AlertOps’ workflows helping to manage escalations, so if and when a HIPAA data breach occurs, AlertOps can trigger notifications to people and systems simultaneously. AlertOps will send reminders to the incident owners at regular intervals along with sending reminders based off of an SLA deadline. Allowing you to trigger other flows, such as changing the control processes needed to resolve major data breach incidents.
AlertOps’ SLAs are set based on priority and severity levels, which allows you to create over rides when needed. AlertOps’ message rules and workflow engines give you the flexibility to configure and enhance your incident management solution to fit your needs and prevent HIPAA data breaches.

How will you notify your customers when a HIPAA data breach occurs?