Recent changes strengths the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and are designed to ease the public’s overall comfort with electronic medical recording keeping. One of the most significant changes to the HIPAA regulations is the new rules concerning the breach of protected health information (PHI). What is a Breach? A breach is, generally, an impermissible use or disclosure under the Privacy Rule that compromises the security or privacy of the protected health information such that the use or disclosure poses a significant risk of financial, reputational, or other harm to the affected individual.What is an example of a breach PHI? An employee accesses the record of a patient outside the performance of their job duties. An unencrypted laptop containing PHI is lost or stolen. PHI is sent to the wrong fax, mailing address, an email address or printer. What happens if a breach occurs? Generally speaking, your institution’s HIPAA compliance officer will need to be notified