Thus, a template notification letter allows you to plug in all of the necessary information in an effective, predetermined format to save you time and ensure that you meet the limit. What is a HIPAA data breach A HIPAA breach is defined as an impermissible use or disclosure under the Privacy Rule that compromises the security or privacy of the protected health information. After all, if you breached your patient’s sensitive information you need to be crystal clear about exactly what happened. The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule dictates the steps HIPAA-covered entities and business associates should take after a breach. In that time you have to figure out exactly what happened, determine proper disciplinary actions if one of your employees is at fault and figure out which of your patients got exposed.Īll of that information also needs to exist within the notification letter that you sent out. It might seem like 60 days is plenty of time to draft a professionally formatted letter that informs your affected patients about what happened, but it really isn’t. If a HIPAA breach occurs at your organization, time isn’t on your side.

In either case, breach notification letters should have been mailed to patients within sixty. So, the deadline to report 2021 small-scale breaches is March 1, 2022. These placeholders make your incident response efforts easy. If however, the breach (or multiple breaches) affected less than 500 patients, it must be reported by March 1st of the following year to the Department of Health and Human Services.

What I mean by that is that it exists as a shell of what its final format would look like but contains placeholders throughout it. HIPAA’s Breach Notification Rule requires covered entities and their business associates to report any breach impacting more than 500 patients within 60 days of discovery. Anyway, the first effective HIPAA breach notification letter I have for you is a true template and it comes from the credible AHIMA organization.

Hipaa breach notification rule