A breach is any access, use, or disclosure of PHI in a manner that violates the HIPAA Rules.
What is considered a breach of HIPAA? There are numerous HIPAA breach examples.
For instance, someone snooping on their ex-spouse’s test results, someone committing prescription fraud, or someone stealing a laptop with patient info on it, are all HIPAA privacy breaches.
If you are wondering how to report a HIPAA breach if you find an organization or individual that could be in violation of HIPAA regulations, OCR has a self-service portal.