Top 5 Tips for HIPAA Compliance

Manny Jones, health care solution manager at LockPath, recently sent me 5 tips to consider in order to meet HIPAA guidelines. It addresses some of the following questions: What does the HIPAA Omnibus rule mean for me? How do I know if I’m compliant? Where do I even begin?

This list of 5 tips are a good place to start.

1. Be prepared for more frequent audits and a fine structure based on knowledge – The new tiered approach means organizations can face much higher fines if they’re not in compliance with the rule.

2. Update Notice of Privacy Practice (NPP) – These should explain that individuals will be notified if there is a breach, disclosures around areas that now require authorizations, and more. Once updated, organizations should redistribute to patients and others to ensure they’re aware of changes.

3. Develop new processes – These should address additional restrictions on use or disclosure of protected health information (PHI).

4. Identify assets containing PHI – Once an organization has an inventory of these assets, they can determine where safeguards/breach notification obligations apply.

5. Understand the new definitions – Organizations should understand how “breach” and “business associate” are now defined and how they apply to their organization.

For those wanting to really dig into the details of HIPAA compliance, you’ll want to consider a HIPAA Compliance training course. These are easy online courses for both the HIPAA privacy officer or your staff. As is noted above, more frequent audits and fines are coming.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

2 Comments

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories