Anchorage Community Mental Health Services

Anchorage Community Mental Health Services (ACMHS) has agreed to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Security Rule with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR). ACMHS will pay $150,000 and adopt a corrective action plan to correct deficiencies in its HIPAA compliance program. ACMHS is a five-facility, nonprofit organization providing behavioral health care services to children, adults, and families in Anchorage, Alaska. OCR opened an investigation after receiving notification from ACMHS regarding a breach of unsecured electronic protected health information (ePHI) affecting 2,743 individuals due to malware compromising the security of its information technology resources. OCR’s investigation revealed that ACMHS had adopted sample Security Rule policies and procedures in 2005, but these were not followed. Moreover, the security incident was the direct result of ACMHS failing to identify and address basic risks, such as not regularly updating their IT resources with available patches and running outdated, unsupported software. “Successful HIPAA compliance requires a common sens