Americans are extremely sensitive about their health histories. They consider their health records and medication information to be more sensitive than the content of their phone conversations, texts and email messages. Given these concerns, the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services is assigned with the delicate and important task of protecting patients' health information privacy rights through the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA, a part of which includes data breach protections.
When a health care information breach happens, health care organizations must report it to the HHS civil rights office. But when a breach is assumed to have exposed 500 or more patient records, the civil rights office is required to post it publicly on its website: in industry terms, the "wall of shame."
Transparency is inherently good, as it intends to create awareness among patients. Similar public reporting initiatives in the health care industry have proven effective in performance improvement by creating competition among organizations. However, in its current format, the HHS Office of Civil Right's wall of shame neither creates awareness nor motivates privacy protection efforts in health care industry.
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