HIPAA compliance is a set of rules and regulations necessary for securing the patient’s health information. It is a legal responsibility to protect its safety under strict measures. There may be many risks involved in the PHI data security such as breaches, threats, and other risks. They all need to be taken care of in order to safeguard the patients’ data.
HIPAA security rule is a must for all organizations whether they do it for fear of penalties or truly respect for the patient’s privacy. Here are a few go-to tips for HIPAA compliance that can ease the burden of the organizations dealing with HIPAA compliance to secure PHI and save themselves from the consequences of a breach.
Keep evaluating the security check program
Although many organizations develop security programs for HIPAA compliance, there is a need to assess and evaluate the security training programs for their effective and efficient use. Your training should include topics related to real scenarios that your employees would use their knowledge to provide practical solutions for showing their abilities in fulfilling daily responsibilities.
Monitor email providers
Businesses dealing with HIPAA must keep a check for the communication gaps they have with their clients. Email providers such as Gmail and Outlook are not by nature HIPAA compliant. The companies need to make sure these emailing tools serve as per their security requirements. There is a need to invest in encryption to minimize the risk of leaking information to the wrong entity.
Update the software
It truly is the case that many times software update requests pop up and people do not bother to pay attention to them at all. There are different requirements for HIPAA security for everything the businesses use digitally. The software the businesses use need to stay updated to discover weaknesses and make room for its development and implementation. If the software selected for HIPAA security is not updated, you need to worry about a breach.
Apply self-audit
Self-audits are an easy way to evaluate if you are keeping HIPAA compliance according to its security rule or not. Self-auditing will save you from the penalties you would face if you are not following HIPAA compliance security rules. You need to run a self-audit of your HIPAA compliance and assess the risks to ensure your security is intact and guards PHI adequately.
Use automated compliance process
manually handling HIPAA compliance can involve costing time, money, resources and the interference of the third party. Manual work also involves the risk of errors. To get rid of all that, you just need to get your compliance process automated. It will eliminate your need of staying compliant by yourself and will ease the process through the automation process.
Conclusion
HIPAA compliance deals with confidential information of the patient. There is a security rule to keep PHI secure and safe from any kind of breach. By keeping the compliance system automated, running self-audit, monitoring emails, having training programs and updates software will keep you HIPAA compliant.