The Office for Civil Rights issued its 13th settlement Dec. 22 for its HIPAA Right of Access Initiative.
Peter Wrobel, MD, doing business as Waycross, Ga.-based Elite Primary Care, agreed to pay $36,000 for violating the Right of Access rule, which requires healthcare organizations to provide patients with copies of their medical records quickly and at a reasonable cost.
In April 2019, OCR received a complaint from a patient alleging that Elite failed to respond to his request for his medical records. OCR then provided Elite technical assistance in May to help the practice comply with the Right of Access requirements and closed the complaint.
In October 2019, OCR received a second complaint that claimed Elite still had not provided the patient with access to his medical records. OCR launched an investigation and determined that Elite's failure to provide the requested medical records was a potential violation of the HIPAA Right of Access standard. As a result of the investigation, the patient received a copy of his medical record in May 2020.
Along with the financial settlement, Elite will undergo a corrective action plan that includes two years of monitoring by the OCR.