HIPAA (Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance is a must for any business or organization that handles patient data. Making your company compliant may involve a range of steps to ensure your IT systems are secure and data is handled in a sensitive way. A HIPAA audit is conducted to ensure you are following the rules and regulations set out by the act. The aim of an audit is to check that your organization is handling protected health information in the appropriate ways, maintaining security and privacy rules. It will look at data security measures, employee training, risk management, and privacy practices.
A HIPAA audit may be triggered by complaints or reports of data breaches. Patients or employees could raise complaints if they have concerns about how health data is handled or violations of privacy. Follow-up audits can also sometimes be conducted if an organization has a history of noncompliance. Additionally, audits can sometimes be carried out at random.
If selected for a HIPAA audit, it’s important to know how to prepare. Demonstrating compliance is essential to show that your organization takes data privacy seriously. Ensuring you are using the right procedures and IT tools is a must to prepare for your audit.
Provide Employee Training
Ensuring your employees are well-trained in the handling of sensitive data is one of the most important parts of preparing for a HIPAA audit. While using the right IT tools for data management matters, it’s your employees who need to know the rules. It’s their responsibility to know how to keep patient information secure and who it can be shared with. All of your new employees must receive HIPAA training and you should keep their training up to date. You must keep records of all training and carry out annual retraining. Be prepared to show your training documents for the last few years during your audit.
Carry Out a Risk Assessment
Risk assessments are designed to identify risks and weaknesses so that they can be mitigated. During a HIPAA audit, you will be asked to show a risk assessment to demonstrate that you have an understanding of potential risks and how they should be addressed. Risk assessments should be conducted annually so you can identify and address any vulnerabilities that might arise.
Assign a Privacy Officer
If you don’t already have a privacy officer, make sure you have one. This role involves managing and monitoring workforce training, privacy practices, security measures, and more. If you run a larger organization, there could also be a security officer who is responsible for managing the company’s security program, including the IT tools used to maintain security.
Create and Implement a Compliance Plan
To be compliant with HIPAA, your organization is required to document policies and procedures. But it’s also essential to ensure these are being implemented across the organization. There are multiple factors to implementing a compliance plan that must address physical systems, administrative procedures, and technical tools and strategies. Make sure that all staff have clear guidelines on how data should be managed and how everyone can help prevent data breaches.
Compliance plans should be reviewed and updated regularly too. Things can change so it’s always important to stay up to date and make changes where necessary. It’s also useful to refresh everyone’s knowledge of what their responsibilities are and what they should be doing to help maintain HIPAA compliance.
Document Storage Locations for Personal Health Information
Your organization needs to know where all personal health information is stored. Whether it is stored in a physical format or digitally, it’s vital to keep track of what data is kept where. This might include filing cabinets, servers, databases or perhaps portable devices such as tablets that might be used by staff. Keeping records of these storage locations and the data they hold shows that you are organized when it comes to storing and tracking sensitive data.
Check Compliance for Mobile Devices
Mobile devices are increasingly used in the workplace, including both those owned by the organization and personal devices of staff and visitors. This means you have to consider the impact of these devices on data security if you want to maintain HIPAA compliance. Having a BYOD (bring your own device) policy may be necessary if you want to manage how employees use their own devices at work.
A HIPAA audit can be frightening, but your organization needs to be well-prepared for it. Conducting your own internal audit will help you ensure you are meeting compliance rules.
