“Toothless” HIPAA?

Rob Stein, Medical Privacy Law Nets No Fines — Lax Enforcement Puts Patients’ Files At Risk, Critics Say, Washington Post, June 5, 2006, at A01, reports that:

In the three years since Americans gained federal protection for their private medical information, the Bush administration has received [19,420] complaints alleging violations but has not imposed a single civil fine and has prosecuted just two criminal cases. * * *

Janlori Goldman, a health-care privacy expert at Columbia University [states,] “They have done almost nothing to enforce the law or make sure people are taking it seriously. I think we’re dangerously close to having a law that is essentially meaningless.”

Special thanks to Prof. Joel C. Dobris of the University of California — Davis for pointing out this report.