Administrative Ethics Paper
Heather Simmons
HCS/335
September 19, 2011
Claudia Haywood

Administrative Ethics Paper
Health care organizations are responsible for the privacy and proper handling of people’s personal medical and financial information. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has been set into place to set the standards to organizations on how to handle patient information and how to deal with any situation that may arise to the best interest of the patient and the organization. There are situations that will arise, and the organization must be prepared to handle it. An instance may arise when the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may have to get involved. The HHS is an organization designed to help enforce the HIPAA rules and regulations and make sure organizations are in compliance with HIPAA.
Recently, a major health care organization in Massachusetts, The General Hospital Corporation and Massachusetts General Organization Inc. (Mass General), settled to pay the U.S. Government $1,000,000 because of a HIPAA violation. Documents containing protected health information (PHI) were lost and never recovered from an employee losing a folder containing 192 patient’s records. The employee took the records from the hospital and while riding the subway returning back to work, the employee left the records on the train. The investigation of the missing records was started from a patient discovering their record was lost and the patient called the HHS Office of Civil Rights. The HHS’s investigation led to the discovery of 192 patient records missing.
Many different people felt the impact of the mistake that one employee made. This one mistake put 192 patients information in the wrong hands. These patients are in jeopardy for possible identity theft and having all of their information for other people to see.