The federal government has imposed no fines under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the three years since the medial-privacy law went into effect, the Washington Post reports.
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Download NowThe government has closed 14,000 of the 19,420 HIPAA-violation complaints it has received without issuing a fine, according to the newspaper. The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights tells the newspaper that the agency starts with a voluntary-compliance approach when it receives a HIPAA complaint.
"Our first approach to dealing with any complaint is to work for voluntary compliance," says Winston Wilkinson, head of the agency's Office of Civil Rights. "So far, it's worked out pretty well." Wilkinson tells the newspaper that the agency makes decisions about penalities on a case-by-case basis and may impose fines in the cases still open.
While the agency has imposed no civil penalties so far, it has referred more than 300 complaints to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, the newspaper reports.
The newspaper notes that hospitals, insurance companies, and others covered by the law prefer the voluntary-compliance approach, but critics contend it sends the wrong message.
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