Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has become a bugbear, as its compliance is not facile but violation may charge the institution with massive fine. But, the good news is that if basic guidelines are followed on a regular basis than full compliance can be assured with zero chances of fine.
With this in mind, we have put together a list of medical practices that you have to follow to adhere to HIPAA recommendations
Medical professionals drive medical organizations and other healthcare practices. Their efficiency is the key to deliver smooth medical services and achieve 100% compliance. So, first step to be HIPAA compliant is to adapt a strategic approach that ensures that you impart pre-eminent knowledge and educate your staff to stick to the guidelines and avoid any sort of violations.
Patients information is most crucial and important factor as a small glitch to this can cause serious breach. Right from the basic data records to other healthcare related critical information, everything should be accessed only by authorized staff.
Top notch security standards should be adopted and accordingly followed. Levels of security should be there and it should be made mandatory to follow all the security standards.
Privacy should not be compromised at any level and in order to stay protected electronic data should be password protected followed by authentication and encryption.
Use of practice management software will help you in providing extra protection to the information. It simplifies everyday medical practice and assist in adhering to HIPAA rules.
Due to the large number of stakeholders and people involved in medical practice there is always a threat of stealing or loss of protected healthcare information. But, thanks to arrival of cloud in healthcare sector. With the help of this Electronic Health records are made where patients detailed information is stored. Best feature of this is that, not everyone can access it and the information is safe and easy to use and above all information can be stored on cloud without any dependency of the device.
HIPAA typically put emphasis on security while dealing with the patients specifically. Keeping that in mind, 2-step verification should be applied at the time of accessing the desired data.
Sometimes out of ignorance employees post pictures or other related information of the patients on social media, which may attract HIPAA fine. Hence special caution has to be taken and staff should be strictly asked to not post such things on social media platforms.
Electronic data is on boom but we cannot ignore the importance of hard copies of the patient’s documents. Here, administrative team should keep all the essential copies in locked cabinets with only access to the authorized staff members.
Protected health information is very important and common thing when you deal with HIPAA guidelines. Every stakeholder should know about PHI and when and how to disclose it, with whom to share, how to share and last but not the least, how much to share. If this is properly handled than half of the risk of HIPAA violation would be eliminated.
So, it is evinced that HIPAA knowledge is very important when it comes to comply with its guidelines. And, OutsourceRCM can immediately assist you with strategic actions tailored to help you with the advanced knowledge of HIPAA and improves your efficiency of its compliance.