Most healthcare organizations know what HIPAA requirements are. However, considering recent regulatory and enforcement changes brings to the importance to be successfully compliant. Today, we will present ways that will ensure that a healthcare organization's preparation for compliance with HIPAA is proper and effective.
Assign a Compliance Officer
If your organization has been categorized as a covered entity, you will need to designate a compliance officer to make sure that your policies and procedures are in compliance with those required by HIPAA. Your Compliance Officer must be completely aware of what is expected of the role. Overall, they play an essential part in deciding what regulations the covered entity should follow and have to be prepared to answer questions that may be asked by the OCR about HIPAA compliance. Also, the Compliance Officer must keep you updated with the new regulations rules that are created because the healthcare organization may be required to adopt them.
Adopt Appropriate Policies and Procedures
One of the main advices to consider when being HIPAA compliant is to establish policies and procedures that restrict the physical access to electronic information systems. Covered entities must provide policies for examining activities in information programs that contain ePHI and especially when transmitting electronically records. Therefore, records of the system activity such as access reports and audit logs have to be reviewed regularly as well as reports, monitoring and violation logging must be documented. It is essential for the covered entity to terminate electronic sessions and to provide encrypting of ePHI.
Train Employees on HIPAA Compliance
Most covered entities have been offering HIPAA rules training to employees for some years. Nevertheless, being aware of recent regulations and enforcement alterations, we may conclude that it is important to ensure organization's HIPAA training is up to date. According to the HIPAA rules, all covered entities are required to deliver training to its employees in order to make sure that operational activities are carried out in compliance with HIPAA. Furthermore, workforce that is not properly educated on HIPAA compliance can cause a data breach, which will most probably bring to incorrigible damage to any organization's reputation.
Define a Contingency Plan
Another important precaution for successful compliance with HIPAA is to define a proper Contingency plan. It should include policies and procedures for reacting to an emergency or other event that causes damages to the systems, containing ePHI. The specifications of the Contingency plan comprise data backup plan, disaster recovery plan, emergency mode operation plan, testing and revision procedures and data analysis. Specifically, the backup plan needs to be tested repeatedly to ensure it is properly working.
Implement Security Software
Healthcare organizations are recommended to install appropriate security software in order to reduce the risk of data violations and to ensure data security and automate regulatory HIPAA compliance. Therefore, most covered entities look for options that will solve security configuration management and will provide continuous monitoring to detect incident problems. It is extremely beneficial for them to use software that monitors and records access and all user activities in information systems, containing ePHI.
There are a lot more tips to help you meet HIPAA compliance requirements. That is only a brief summary of many of the major points. If you consider you are a covered entity, you really need to keep updates with recent regulations as they apply to your specific organization.
Jen Watts covers topics on HIPAA compliance and network monitoring. He recommends using desktop monitoring software to help with following the HIPAA's Security Rule requirements.
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