HIPAA Breaches for Paper Records – Where is the Rage?

Last month, Massachusetts General Hospital got slapped with a $1 million fine for potential HIPAA Privacy Rule violations. This case is interesting in that it involves paper files that an employee left on the subway. From Florida to Washington State, we’ve seen other HIPAA breaches of paper records.

This is exactly the situation I’ve discussed in the past. Where is the outrage over the privacy breach? Where are the groups that proclaim to support patient privacy rights complaining about this? If these had been electronic medical records, we’d no doubt be bombarded by warnings from these groups about the evils of technology and the end of days. But since these are paper records, there is no outrage…and no real concern over patient privacy rights.

There is always a lot of concern about patient privacy rights when you deal with electronic records. The reason is that manufactures of electronic medical records have money. It is easy to shakedown these manufacturers of EMRs and EHRs for cash so they score well on your scorecard. But, when it comes to really caring about patient privacy rights, they are nowhere to be found.