HIPAA enforcement isn’t nearly as fat a cash cow as enforcement of False Claims Act (FCA) and other healthcare fraud laws is, it still takes a lot of money out of the pockets of providers and into the hands of the federal government. But tracking the economics of HIPAA enforcement is tough because the government doesn’t publish data on HIPAA recovery amounts the way it does with the FCA. However, new data from the HHS Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has recently emerged that offers some rare insight into the dollars and cents of HIPAA enforcement over the past two decades. Here are some of the key figures, which encompass April 2003, when HIPAA first began being enforced, through 2020: $129,722,482: Total amount of civil penalties and settlements collected by OCR for HIPAA infractions; $26 Million: Highest one-year total collected in past five years (2018); $12 Million: Lowest one-year total collected in past five years (2019); $16 Million: The highest ever settlement for a HIPAA violation, paid by Anthem in 2018 for a massive 2015 data breach affecting 79 million people; 250,367: Total number of HIPAA complaints received by OCR; 3,992: Number of HIPAA complaints that remain open (2 percent…
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