Office for Civil Rights is investigating Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. More than $66 million in fines have been assessed by medical practices. It is primary responsibility of medical practice owner to secure the data of their patients. To govern electronic data, healthcare organizations needs to create policies and rules. When creating internal policies to satisfy HIPAA and protect patients, these are some best tips to secure healthcare data.
Personal health records
Personal health records (PHI) must be encrypted in communication. That means that any database where patient information resides needs to be secured, as well as any method of sending it. Most electronic medical record (EMR) solutions include secure communications portals for intra-office communications, as well as messages sent to and from patients. Encryption adds an additional level of safeguarding when it comes to protecting data.
Regular risk assessment
Part of HIPAA compliance is conducting a risk assessment to determine any vulnerability in data transmission, storage, or sharing. Without an expert team member who is vigilant and knowledgeable on data security, contracting a security consultant to perform a risk assessment is usually a good investment. Assessments should be done at least annually, if there are any major changes to the business processes or hardware, during certain staff turnover, or after a move.
Staff Training
Your staff should be trained on HIPAA laws and how your business complies. A good deal of the practices for safeguarding PHI are not necessarily intuitive, especially when laws change or are updated. Regular training should take place for new staff, when there is a staff turnover, and periodically to keep the knowledge fresh.
Prepare for the worst
The speed of your response and mitigation are components of the policies required by HIPAA. Maintain and be ready to executive an action plan in case of a breach. Review procedures regularly so that you know which steps to take should data security become compromised.
Know your vendors
Because all business entities that access or process PHI must comply with HIPAA, you need to know that you can trust your partners to uphold the privacy of your patients. Be familiar with your practice’s business associate agreements. Ask them to see their risk assessments.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is a legislation that provides data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical data. We at Medisys Data Solutions ensure that all our processes are HIPAA compliant. Extensive HIPAA training is provided to everyone here who handles patient health data. All patient health information is protected.
You can outsource medical billing service to Medisys and focus on your patients treatment instead of their data security.
About Medisys
We are a group of medical billing experts who offer comprehensive billing and coding services to doctors, physicians & hospitals. We provide end to end billing and coding solutions. Medisys Data Solutions RCM solutions ensures that the providers recover every $ they are entitled to. Our vision for the providers is “You Cure. We $ecure.”
