The HIPAA law to safeguard patient health data is a critical arrangement that is well-known to the people working at the physician’s office. But many still have doubts when implementing a successful HIPAA compliance plan. The healthcare service providers who are not fully informed regarding changes in the law risk potential infringement that couldn’t just harm a practice’s reputation, but may attract criminal and civil fines.
Steps to implement a successful HIPAA compliance plan:
Improvement in the privacy policy
Healthcare providers must create, embrace, and execute privacy and security strategies and procedures. They should likewise ensure that they are reporting all the laid down policies and procedures, including an action plan of things to do when a breach occurs.
Organizing a privacy and security personnel
Healthcare organizations ought to appoint a privacy and security officer. This could either be the same or distinctive people. This individual ought to be familiar with all HIPAA rules and regulations.
Regularly checking for Risk Assessment
The physicians should regularly conduct a risk assessment to recognize vulnerabilities. This will help guarantee the confidentiality and uprightness of protected patient information. It is vital to remediate any distinguished dangers and update policies. It heeds a long way in minimizing risks.
Adopting email policies to connect with the patients
The doctor’s office needs to embrace approaches with respect to the utilization of emails. Just as wrong billing and coding lead to delayed and rejected claims, not keeping interaction with the patient via emails, means you are not implementing a successful HIPAA policy.
But, HIPAA does not restrict the utilization of email for transmitting secured health information and it doesn’t require that the email be encoded or encrypted. However, experts in the field suggest that it is best to encrypt email if possible. If your organization can’t encrypt email, ensure that your patients know about the dangers they are confronting if they request their patient data over email.
Adopting the smartphone strategy
Healthcare providers should embrace strict arrangements with respect to the storage of secured patient information on convenient electronic devices like smartphones and tablets and they should regulate the removal of those electronic gadgets from the premises. HHS has issued a direction in regards to the utilization of cell phones, and healthcare service providers need to be acquainted with it.
Training your Staff
Preparing all the employees who utilize or disclose protected health information should be trained according to the HIPAA compliance guide. The healthcare service provider should conduct refresher courses and prepare the staff with updated policies and procedures.
As a matter of fact, training is not only limited to HIPAA compliances but should also be given to the accounts department process clean claims. Still, if you as a physician find errors and obligations in the medical billing and coding tasks, the option to outsource that undertaking is would be a wise decision to go by.
Execution of HIPAA Privacy Policy
Privacy and security strategies must be appropriately actualized by a healthcare services provider, and they ought to sanction those staffers who violate them.
These seven steps shall definitely help healthcare organizations to remain in tandem with HIPAA compliances, provided all the required resources are in place to execute the policies with updated changes.
