Californian Mental Health Center Fined $100,000 for HIPAA Violation

Shidonna Raven
2 days ago
2 min read

November 20, 2024

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has imposed a $100,000 civil monetary penalty on a Californian mental health center for failing to provide a patient with timely access to her medical records.

On March 18, 2020, a patient of Rio Hondo Community Mental Health Center, a directly operated Outpatient Program of the County of Los Angeles Department of Mental Health, visited the clinic and completed a medical record request form. The patient should have been provided with a copy of the requested records within 30 days, but the requested records were not provided until 7 months after the initial request was made.

There was an initial delay of 2 months as California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a stay-at-home order on March 19, 2020, the day after the request was made. All County buildings were closed to the public and there was little to no staff working at the clinics at that time. Staff started to return to the clinic in May 2020, and on May 22, 2020, the patient was informed in a phone call that she could collect her records on May 27, 2020.

When the patient turned up at Rio Hondo on May 27, she waited 20 minutes but was not seen, then left her contact information and asked to be contacted when her records were ready to be collected. The records had still not been provided by July 17, 2020, so the patient called Rio Hondo several times that day and was transferred to the medical record department but the calls were not answered.

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