November 3, 1999 HIPAA Announcement:

HIPAA complaints on the rise in 2005, SHARP says

10/25/04

According to the Southern HIPAA Administrative Regional Process (SHARP), this workgroup looked at and assessed the nearly 7,500 HIPAA complaints filed through June 2004

They anticipate an increase in complaints next year. Gloria Steinberg, a member of SHARP's Workgroup board, told Healthcare IT News that the probable cause is the bottleneck from flaws in the correcting formats and slow dispatch of legal information to consumers, Consumers will also make more complaints once they better understand the rule.

So far, the Office of Civil Rights has closed 55% of complaints related to privacy because of lack of jurisdiction or discovery that the actions did not violate HIPAA.