Three Pharmaceutical Employees Given Criminal Sentences for HIPAA Violations

Three employees of Warner Chilcott, a pharmaceutical company headquartered in New Jersey, were sentenced to home confinement and levied fines, each to varying degrees, for violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and its privacy provisions. The three district managers -- one located in California, one in North Carolina and one in New York -- were prosecuted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for selling consumers' protected health information (PHI) without the subjects' permission. These district managers and their sales representatives accessed patients' PHI in order to submit prior authorizations for Atelvia, an osteoporosis drug, and did so without an accompanying signed HIPAA Authorization Form for each consumer.