Home Health & Hospice Week

Letting unauthorized employees access patients’ medical records may cost you — a lot. Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital in Washington is learning that lesson the hard way.

The nonprofit community hospital is paying $240,000 after 23 of its security guards “impermissibly accessed the medical records of 419 individuals,” the HHS Office for Civil Rights notes in a release. The hospital will also “implement a plan to update its policies and procedures to safeguard protected health information and train its workforce members to prevent this type of snooping behavior in the future,” OCR notes.

See the hospital’s agreement and corrective action plan at www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/compliance-enforcement/agreements/yakima-ra-cap/index.html.