There have been concerning news about the security breaches, stolen data, ransomware, and many other forms of cyber crimes. With these, the health providers should be aware of the risks. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the safety and security of the medical data.
Being a person in charge in the patients’ medical data, you will want to ensure the safety and privacy of their data. HIPAA is the US federal legislation which its role is to protect the data privacy and medical information safety and security.
The patients and related parties have the right to demand the privacy for their personal medical data. the healthcare providers should be compliant to the HIPAA law to protect the health information and medical data of their patients.
There are many businesses and health providers who are not being compliant to the HIPAA law. Therefore, HIPAA compliance becomes a necessary topic when you are preparing for the audit.
If you are looking for the best ways to prepare the HIPAA security risk analysis, you must first define the HIPAA audit first.
Understanding the HIPAA Audit & Title II
To ensure HIPAA compliance, the OCR gets closer to the healthcare providers, health entities, as well as business associates. The HIPAA audits are done to track the attempts and efforts of being the HIPAA compliance. Before the HIPAA compliance audits, the health producers should conduct a risk assessment and prepare the audits very well.
There are five sections in the HIPAA. What people have been raving about is the existence of the Title II. Title II is arguably the core of the HIPAA law since it focuses on protecting the patients’ medical information.
The guideline in the Title II dictates the privacy rules to protect the personal health information.
Is AWS HIPAA compliant emphasizes the guidelines in Title II? The privacy rule in the Title II focuses on the PHI or Protected Health Information. The guideline shows the rules and standards to protect the patient’s health information. That includes the relevant parties like the covered entities, health care providers as well as business associates.
The involved parties above should provide the safeguards and protection of the health information, which we would comprehend as the PHI – Protected Health Information. If ones have transferred the data electronically, then it would be called ePHI or Electronic Protected Health Information.
Staff HIPAA training
It is important to make all the working staff understand the HIPAA compliance practices. The HIPAA training will help you build a solid team which can be compliant to HIPAA in every premise.
The HIPAA training is prevalent for the employees who haven’t been trained or do not have the exact comprehension of the HIPAA compliance.
The training activity itself is not sufficient enough to get to the practices. You will need to document all of the training moments to create the proofs that you can show to the OCR – Office of Civil Rights. It is also important to create the relevant policies that enforce the training and education of HIPAA law to make sure that every employee is equipped with sufficient knowledge and skills to practice the HIPAA compliance activities.
Make a risk analysis and create the better plan overtime
It is important to conduct the risk analysis and create a risk management plan. The analysis will help you to reveal all of the risks which your company might be facing in the future. After revealing the risks, there would be a risk management plan to handle those possible risks.
The security documents should be available in order to conduct the risk analysis internally. However, you will always have the option to let the reputable and trustworthy third party to handle the assessment on your behalf. This will help you to keep the risk assessment results stay objective.
The reports should be well-documented. That means you will record it in videos, audios, or documents and store them in the good storage. All of the documents including how you handle the incident, notifications, security updates, and others should also be included.
Choose someone who is in charge of the security assessment
According to HIPAA, you will need to select the security assessment and privacy officer. It doesn’t necessarily encourage you to recruit new people. You can choose someone who is responsible and reliable for it. they will supervise everything and handle the security and privacy of the PHI and ePHI.
The specific officer will review the agreements between the involved parties. This officer should be able to notice the courteous review related to cyber security. The risk assessment over the IT systems and data security will be the routine. Therefore, picking someone who knows IT very well can be a great move.
Get a good look on the policies practices
You will need to know how the policies and procedures are implemented in your company. It is something not to overlook because OCR will really pay attention to these topics.
The policies and procedures are significant to regular activities. It is not a one man show. You will need to discuss it with your team. If your staff are exhausted with the policies, you will need to identify the problems and make a few changes as needed. Show the OCR about your agenda. It will also be helpful.
The internal audit importance
By conducting the internal audit, you will quickly find the underlying problems in the system. Therefore, you will have the chance to fix these before OCR making the audits. However, the timing should be prevalent. You will need to conduct the internal audits regularly to get the maximum result.
Doing this independently can be a great idea. But it does not hurt to hire professionals to help you with the internal audit. That way, the risk analysis and risk management planning tasks will be conducted in faster rate.
Don’t lose the track
To ensure you stay on the right track, you will want to have internal remediation plan. It is important to see the HIPAA as the continuity. The remediation plan can help the business associates and providers to be on track and on the same page. You don’t want to leave your whole operations at risks. Therefore, conducting the steps we mentioned will turn the opportunities into benefits.
Are there any tools for analyze HIPAA?
A lot of strategies are being utilized and introduced since this is the most important aspect of any business or companies. Although this really is my first time hearing about HIPAA security.