The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' Office for Civil Rights (OCR) publicly announced its HIPAA audit protocol on June 26, 2012. The HITECH Act required OCR to create a test audit program to assess the national level of HIPAA compliance. In response, the OCR created the audit protocol and has conducted the first 20 audits. During the test audit, 115 covered entities total will be reviewed by December 2012. The main objective of the HIPAA audits is to help to identify best practices and to study trends.
Analysts of the OCR report that audits that have been conducted thus far have revealed numerous HIPAA violations.
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