Closing HIPAA compliance gaps: Getting your policies in order
Reinforcement of any good HIPAA compliance attempt requires strong policies and customary risk assessments. Healthcare institutes that keep up to this can be sure that they’re preserving the security of patient health data and are avoiding unpleasant circumstances that could result not doing the same. Maintaining patient data protection is the duty of every employee who is a part of a health care organization and one should never compromise on it. If you follow your practices ethically and with care, nothing can ever go out of place.
While every healthcare organization is aware about HIPAA Compliance, smaller entities such as physicians do not have all the policies and procedures in place to sufficiently meet the requirements to maintain the privacy and security of patient health information.
Accept it or not, there are approximately 52 policies that organizations may perhaps to be HIPAA compliant. To verify the ones required, an organization must execute an all-inclusive risk assessment and gap analysis. Based on the results, a facility can then craft the appropriate policies, addressing all the relevant details that the regulations demand. Although organizations can find standard policies online, these may not be sufficient, especially for specialty practices with unique requirements.
Small mistakes Can Lead to Bigger hitches
If you pay less attention towards HIPAA compliance know for a fact that you’re putting it into s risky position. Even though organizations fail to understand the scope of HIPAA regulations and how one should address it, the penalties of an infringe are rarely minor.
Steps to Alleviate Risks
Making sure that a practice has the relevant HIPAA policies prepared may seem intimidating, yet there are quite a few tangible ways by which organizations can achieve better compliance. The first step of the procedure is to conduct appropriate policy documentation and risk assessments.
Gap Analysis
The only way an organization can find out if it is compliant or not is by conducting a gap analysis. A gap analysis comprises of a thorough evaluation of the current policies, visually observing the current operations and by asking their staff members about how they retain patient health information safety.
Modify Policies
Once they figure out what policies are needed via a gap analysis, they can take it further by consulting software vendors to find an initial point for policy development. Note that the services should modify the policies in order to tackle specific risks and needs that they’re designed for. Specialty practices in specific cannot simply take on policies that are intended for hospitals or other patient care providers. Modification of policies is the best way to ensure that a practice is doing its best to keep up with its HIPAA policy needs.
Reinforcement of any good HIPAA compliance attempt requires strong policies and customary risk assessments. Healthcare institutes that keep up to this can be sure that they’re preserving the security of patient health data and are avoiding unpleasant circumstances that could result not doing the same. Maintaining patient data protection is the duty of every employee who is a part of a health care organization and one should never compromise on it. If you follow your practices ethically and with care, nothing can ever go out of place.