The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency charged with enforcing the electronic and code set standards of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, has made available on its Web site an Online Complaint Submission Form.
The form allows complaints to be submitted about covered entities that are not compliant with HIPAA’s TCS standards. The form requires one’s contact information, certain general information on the covered entity about which one is making the complaint, and the specific complaint. There is also a section for further comments.
Complaints can be submitted either over the Internet on a secure or default server, or via a downloadable PDF paper form. CEs that fail to prove they are in compliance with the TCS standards must submit a corrective action plan, or they may be forced to pay a fine of up to $100 for each offense. The maximum fine amount is $25,000 per year.
To view the compliant form, go to: http://cms.hhs.gov/hipaa/hipaa2/support/correspondence/complaint/securitychoice.asp.