HIPAA Blog

[ Thursday, March 27, 2008 ]

 

CVS Settles with the Texas AG: I've reported before on the complaint filed by the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, against CVS, after some dumpster-diving showed that CVS was throwing out, in the regular trash, paper records that contained PHI. The case has been settled, with CVS agreeing to institute new policies and procedures to protect information, and paying a $315,000 fine.

Abbott is a bit of a publicity hound, but actually this sounds like a perfectly balanced result. The AG's office gets some cash to offset its investigation and fund new ones; CVS gets off relatively easily, considering the bad press that could've been generated here and CVS' advertising budget; a dumb problem gets treated like one, rather than being treated like a serious problem; and both a precedent and a set of useful documents will be generated, so other pharmacies (or anyone in the healthcare industry, for that matter) will have a road map to see what their own policies and procedures should look like.

Hat tip: Kathy Hutto.

Jeff [10:10 AM]

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