Getting close can sometimes be a good thing, like in the horseshoes game. But not when you’re on the receiving end of a HIPAA fine and have to pay out $6.9 million like Premera Blue Cross. The insurer is the largest health plan in the Pacific Northwest, serving more than 2 million people. This fine is the second-largest payment made to resolve a HIPAA violation in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) history.

The breach resulted in the confidential information of over 10 million people being exposed countrywide. In March of 2015, Premera filed a breach report on its own behalf and network of affiliates indicating that hackers had gained unauthorized access to its IT system. This breach was undetected for nearly 9 months, during which time cybercriminals had access to their network, which included 10.4 million individuals’ protected health information (PHI). These records contained names, dates of birth, email addresses, physical addresses, Social Security numbers, banking information, and health plan clinical information according to HHS.

While the nearly $7 million fine is incredible, it comes in at less than half of the largest fine on record to date, which was from Anthem – a $16 million fine that affected 79 million customers.

So do not think you can wait to ensure your HIPAA compliant from and IT perspective because HIPAA compliance is more than training your staff or keeping your application passwords safe.

This is WHY you should CHOOSE Foris IT Management.

We understand the rules and have the systems in place to ensure you are compliant. Our job is to make sure your protected from not only ransomware, and hackers, but from HHS and the HIPAA police.

Do not wait until it is too late to call us in for your free HIPAA IT Analysis.

We will check your network devices, PCs, Servers, Switches, ISP, WiFi, and more and tell you exactly what machines are out of compliance and what you can do to get back into compliance. Whether you use our service or not this FREE HIPAA IT check is invaluable to you and your practice.

Call now 830-515-4565 to schedule your HIPAA IT Analysis.