HIPAA HITECH Data Breach: $1000 Per Patient?

Posted January 4, 2012 08:54 AM by Jack Anderson CEO Compliance Helper    

 The cost of a HIPAA HITECH data breach has escalated with the recent spate of class action lawsuits.  There seems to be a consensus among the law firms that $1,000 per patient is at least the asking price for damages.  This makes even a relatively small data breach attractive to the firms that specialize in class action lawsuits.  Now are they going to win all these suits, probably not, but many organizations and their insurance companies will settle rather than pay the huge costs of defending these suits.

Stanford, Sutter Health, Anthem Blue Cross, and Tricare have also been hit with class action suits.  The Tricare and Sutter Health are for over 1 billion dollars.  Most of these have been caused by business associates yet covered entities still seem to think that by having a BA agreement in place they are safe.  Not so much!  It is imperative that CEs monitor their BAs.  There are tools such as our BA Tracker that accomplish this at little or no cost to the CE.  Penny wise and a billion foolish is a bad bet.