Is Your Staff Helping Or Hurting Your HIPAA Compliance?
Has your staff been properly trained to maintain HIPAA compliance in their daily work?
No one said HIPAA compliance was easy.
It’s a higher level of security and data governance that healthcare organizations have to follow.
Compliance is complex, and there is a critical element of assessment and planning that needs to go into your compliance strategy.
In particular, you need to make sure your staff understands their role in your organization’s overall compliance efforts.
Is Your Staff Contributing To Your HIPAA Compliance?
It doesn't matter which types of technical safeguards you have in place if your staff doesn't know their role in compliance.
You would be surprised how often staff members mishandle records, leaving a patient file in hard copy in a waiting area or open on a visible workstation screen. The fact is that your staff interacts with ePHI more than any of your vendors or other business contacts.
Are you sure your staff knows how to maintain HIPAA compliance?
2 Reasons You Can’t Overlook Your Staff’s Role In HIPAA
Whether you’re managing your HIPAA compliance on your own, or you’ve invested in healthcare IT solutions for your practice, you need to have a strategy in place.
Have you considered the following?
Who Is Responsible? You'll need to appoint a Privacy and a Security Officer as part of your HIPAA requirements. While not specifically asked for, you'll also need to have members of your team handling compliance documentation.
Individuals with good organizational and writing skills are needed in this position, given that documenting your actions is a huge part of HIPAA compliance. A designated Security Officer and clear documentation are required to meet the Administrative Safeguards.
Does Your Staff Know Their Role? An effective HIPAA compliance plan has to teach your staff how to handle a range of potential situations:
How to participate in compliance best practices
How to identify and address suspicious emails, phishing attempts, social engineering tactics, and more.
How to use business technology without exposing patient data and other assets to external threats by accident.
How to respond when you suspect that your organization is noncompliant.
Access On-Demand HIPAA Training Right Now
Are you worried your staff may not know how to maintain compliance?
Start eliminating your potential HIPAA compliance risks right now by enrolling your staff in on-demand training offered by 4Med:
By investing in robust HIPAA training for your staff, you’ll have a foundation in place for your HIPAA compliance.
