Healthcare offices and business associates (BA) must comply with HIPAA privacy, security, and breach notification rules. Protecting health information from any potential breach is essential for any medical practice.
Even with controls, violations, and data breaches can still occur. Although most breaches are unintentional, they still represent a serious issue that can bring major consequences.
Failure to comply with HIPAA rules can result in warnings, sanctions, and penalties that can affect your business.
What is HIPAA?
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, better known as HIPAA, is a federal law that requires the creation of national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient´s consent or knowledge.
HIPAA required the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop regulations protecting the privacy and security of certain health information. Therefore, HHS published the HIPAA Privacy Rule (Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information) and the HIPAA Security Rule (Security Standards for the Protection of Electronic Health Information).
What happens if you violate HIPAA?
That depends on the severity of the violation. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) prefers to resolve these violations using non-punitive measures, such as voluntary compliance or issuing technical guidance to help covered entities address areas of non-compliance.
However, if the violations are serious and have been allowed to persist for a long time or if there are multiple areas of non-compliance, financial penalties, sanctions, and license loss can occur.
If you want to know more about the penalties for HIPAA violations, visit the HIPAA Journal website.
Here are some things you need to consider to minimize HIPAA risks:
1. Take a proactive approach
To minimize HIPAA security risks, it is important not to wait until an incident occurs. Proactively establishing testing security measures beforehand is essential to guarding your patients’ protected health information.
Be aware of areas of improvement, lookout for weaknesses and implement risk analysis policies to prevent violations.
Practices can perform a risk analysis using the HIPAA audit protocol. The Office of the National Coordinator and the HHS Office of the General Counsel created the security risk assessment tool to assist healthcare providers in smaller practices in performing risk analysis in their businesses.
2. Educate your team periodically
Employees should be educated when changes are made to HIPAA regulations. Each employee needs to understand what penalties they´ll face if compliance is not maintained. Conduct periodic training to ensure employees know how to prevent HIPAA violations.
Therefore, here are some tips on how medical practice employees can prevent HIPAA violations:
- Correctly store your files.
- Never disclose passwords or share login credentials.
- Never leave portable devices or documents unattended.
- Do not text or email PHI (Protected Health Information).
- Dispose of PHI properly.
Learn more about how to reduce HIPAA risks with your employees and how to improve your medical practice on our blog What are some best techniques to improve your medical practice?
3. Have an Incident Response Plan & Backup Data Plan
If a data breach happens, an incident response plan and a backup data plan are essential.
Incident Response Plan
Make a contact list in case of emergency. Think ahead of the situation. What would you do if a breach occurred in your medical practice? Know exactly who you need to call for assistance and what actions they need to take to help your practice recover quickly.
Backup Data Plan
Ensure that your data is saved and can be easily recovered. Access to your PHI is essential to your medical practice’s operations. Have a data backup system. Also, do a test run to ensure it works before using the backup plan in real life.
4. Implement technical safeguards
Medical practices must always use quality antivirus software, email filters, and web security gateways.
Employees must always keep their devices secure. A common problem that results in HIPAA violations is the loss or theft of mobile devices containing PHI.
Also, remind your employees to know where their work-related devices are. Staff should turn the devices off and lock them up when not in use.
Another important aspect of protecting your devices is enabling encryptions, firewalls, and user authentication processes. These can remotely lock or wipe a device of information using a software program.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services website provides more information on preventing HIPAA breaches and establishing a risk-aware culture.
Make sure your partners are also HIPAA-compliant
It is also important that you ensure that your business associates comply with HIPAA to avoid any potential breaches of your practice in the future. Having agreements in place is very important when it comes to PHI.
Ensure there is an agreement for all business associates, including vendors, to make sure they are held accountable.
At Health Prime, we are HIPAA-compliant. We have controls and safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your protected health information. Our employees are trained periodically to stay updated on HIPAA policy changes and avoid potential breaches.
At Health Prime, we are not a vendor. We are a partner. We take care of your information, as you take care of your patients.
If you want more information about our services, reach out to us at [email protected]. Make sure you subscribe to our Health Prime blog. Stay tuned for all the latest updates on how to improve your medical practice and make sure you are getting paid for your work.
