Look for the 2016 agenda for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights to accelerate its recent emphasis on enforcement of HIPAA.

Over a five-week period, the OCR announced plans to collect $5 million in monetary penalties in three enforcement actions against HIPAA covered entities. This increased emphasis on collecting fines and penalties is seen as a move to provide funds for the agency. These funds will be allocated to a program focused on auditing entity compliance with the HIPAA Privacy, Security and Breach Notification Rules, as well as other enforcement and regulatory activities.

Several recent large data breaches involving email mishaps serve as a reminder of precautions that healthcare entities must take with protected health information contained in digital communications that are sent or received by their organizations.

Recent incidents listed on the HHS “wall of shame” include two incidents at the North Carolina Dept. of Health and Human Services. Another reported incident, not yet publicly posted on the HHS website, occurred at the University of Cincinnati Health.

HIPAA is not a new issue for healthcare providers; however, the ever changing threat landscape along with the OCR’s renewed commitment to compliance and enforcement, reinforces the need for healthcare providers to ensure that they are focused on preparing for privacy or security issues that are increasingly occurring.

As the healthcare industry continues to digitize patient records, that data is a growing target for cybercriminals intent on committing medical identity theft and fraud.

The number of individuals affected by medical identity theft in the U.S. increased 22 percent in 2014 compared to the previous year—an increase of nearly half a million victims.

The recent string of major hacker attacks in the healthcare sector, including the cyber-attack on UCLA Health, highlights the need for healthcare providers to step up their security programs.

St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Massachusetts has been hit with a $218,000 HIPAA penalty. This penalty is the result of an investigation stemming from two security incidents.

The first incident involved staff members using an Internet site to share documents containing patient data without first assessing risks. The second involved the theft of a worker’s personally owned unencrypted laptop and storage device.

Recent health data breaches once again have business associates (BAs) grabbing headlines, which reinforces the importance of scrutinizing third-parties handling PHI.

Recently North Shore-LIJ Health System reported that they did not learn about a breach at one of their BA’s until eight months later. Shortly thereafter, Medical Informatics Engineering, which offers a Web-hosted electronic health record system as well as personal health records, disclosed that they were the target of a breach that affected its clients and their patients.

Beacon Health System of Indiana, which includes two hospitals: Elkhart General Hospital, Elkhart, and Memorial Hospital, South Bend, recently had to notify patients about a security breach. The breach was caused by a phishing attack targeting employee emails. An investigation showed that some of the emails were compromised as early as 2013 and the breach was not discovered until March 2015. Among the information accessed were names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, and drivers license numbers.

The Department of Health and Human Services count of major health data breaches shows the healthcare sector to be a growing target for hackers, particularly for hackers using phishing attacks.

As of April 29, the HHS’s website that displays breaches that affected at least 500 people shows 1,213 incidents affecting more than 133.2 million individuals since the HIPAA breach notification rule went into effect in September 2009. The recent attack against Anthem, accounts for 78.8 million of those victims.

A recent study published in JAMA demonstrates the continuing threat posed to patients and healthcare providers by data breaches. Between 2010 and 2013 they found that there were 949 breaches reported to the HHS that each affected more than 500 people. In total there were over 29 million health records exposed by data breaches during that time.

The study also found that breaches resulting from hacking nearly doubled during the period the study covered. This trend is likely to continue without increased vigilance on the part of covered entities everywhere.