Tips To Keep Your Practice HIPAA Compliant

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Tips To Keep Your Practice HIPAA
Compliant
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Tips To Keep Your Practice HIPAA Compliant
The Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) was introduced in year
1996. As the name suggests, it was created to
ensure that all protected health information
was appropriately secured and restricted access
to be given only to authorized individuals.
Another goal was to prevent healthcare fraud.
Healthcare providers, health plans, and
healthcare clearinghouses are primarily covered
under HIPAA. Healthcare professionals are most
often told it is important to comply with HIPAA
because of the penalties for noncompliance. A
different argument is that HIPAA compliance
builds trust, which gives patients the confidence
to reveal details about their health to
healthcare professionals, which improves the
delivery of healthcare. Whatever might be the
reason, its important that your practice must be
HIPAA compliant. In this article, we shared few
tips to keep your practice HIPAA
compliant. HIPAA Training to RCM Team Your
revenue cycle team must understand the importance
and confidentiality for the information the they
are handling. Your RCM team must be trained
properly on ways how to process, transfer the
data. Each and every team member must be aware of
all guidelines of HIPAA compliance and you must
conduct frequent internal audits to ensure
that. Scope of PHI Some providers think that
protecting patient privacy is limited to masking
basic information such as names and SSNs. In
reality, it applies to any information that is
personal or unique to a patient. This could
include patient phone numbers, emails, addresses,
etc. According to HIPAA rules, contact
information is equal to medical information and
must be guarded and protected. Your team must be
aware what constitutes Protected Health
Information (PHI).
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Tips To Keep Your Practice HIPAA Compliant
Restricted Access Patient demographics and
insurance data are confidential information which
must be accessed by authorized person only. Not
everyone in your RCM can have access to that
information, information will be shared only if
valid reason is available. Data
Sharing Constantly review your methods of data
sharing. Most practices shares crucial patient
data on email without any password or encryption.
Provider often email detailed information to
patients that should not be read or received by
others. To avoid a HIPAA violation, make
absolutely sure that these emails are
encrypted. Business Associate Agreement Have
Business Associate Agreement (BAA) in place for
all activities that require data sharing with
outside entity. Whether its billing company or
collection agency, enter into a standard BAA in
place before started working. Use of Electronic
Devices There are also rules that apply to the
types of electronic devices i.e., computers,
smartphones, tablets, etc. that are used to store
and send information. Frequently, providers will
use their personal devices to send information to
patients, which could be a serious HIPAA
violation.
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Tips To Keep Your Practice HIPAA Compliant
Secured Hard Copies Electronic data is on boom
but we cannot ignore the importance of hard
copies of the patients documents. Here,
administrative team should keep all the essential
copies in locked cabinets with only access to the
authorized staff members. Be very careful about
how you maintain patient files, as well as how to
dispose of them when needed. Get Cyber
Insurance We now operate in a world where
hacking, ransomware and other types of
cyberattacks are common, and practices need to be
more vigilant than ever before. The costs related
to a cyberattack and a resulting violation will
be far more expensive than your investment in
insurance. Be sure to work with your insurance
agency to determine the level of cyber insurance
necessary to properly protect your
practice. HIPPAA is a very serious regulatory
process that must be carefully followed by all
healthcare practices. The good news is that HIPPA
guidelines are clear and easily understood when
reviewed regularly. You can also look for annual
updates to ensure that your practice continues to
follow the most current regulations.
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