Preparation for conformity with HIPAA for data security by Supremeus Group

Posted by John on October 2nd, 2016

Most healthcare organizations understand what HIPAA requirements are. However, considering recent regulatory and enforcement changes brings towards the importance to be successfully compliant. These days, we will present ways that will make sure that a healthcare organization's preparation for conformity with HIPAA is proper and efficient.

Assign a Compliance Officer

If your business has been categorized as a protected entity, you will need to designate a compliance officer to make certain that your policies and procedures are within compliance with those required by HIPAA. Your Compliance Officer should be completely aware of what is expected from the role. Overall, they play an essential part within deciding what regulations the covered entity should follow and need to be prepared to answer questions that might be asked by the OCR about HIPAA conformity. Also, the Compliance Officer must keep you updated using the new regulations rules that are produced because the healthcare organization may be asked to adopt them.

Adopt Appropriate Policies as well as Procedures for Employee hipaa training

One of the main advices to think about when being HIPAA compliant is to determine policies and procedures that restrict the physical use of electronic information systems. Covered entities must provide policies with regard to examining activities in information programs which contain ePHI and especially when transmitting in electronic format records. Therefore, records of the system activity for example access reports and audit logs need to be reviewed regularly as well as reviews, monitoring and violation logging must end up being documented. It is essential for the protected entity to terminate electronic sessions and also to provide encrypting of ePHI.

Train Workers on HIPAA compliance training

Most covered entities happen to be offering HIPAA rules training to employees for many years. Nevertheless, being aware of current regulations and enforcement alterations, we may conclude that you should ensure organization's HIPAA training is current. According to the HIPAA rules, all covered entities are required to provide training to its employees to make sure that operational activities are completed in compliance with HIPAA. Furthermore, workforce that isn't properly educated on HIPAA compliance may cause a data breach, which will most likely bring to incorrigible damage to any kind of organization's reputation.

Define a Contingency Strategy

Another important precaution for successful compliance with HIPAA would be to define a proper Contingency plan. It will include policies and procedures for reacting for an emergency or other event that causes damages towards the systems, containing ePHI. The specifications from the Contingency plan comprise data backup strategy, disaster recovery plan, emergency mode procedure plan, testing and revision procedures as well as data analysis. Specifically, the backup plan must be tested repeatedly to ensure it is actually properly working.

Implement Security Software

Healthcare organizations are recommended to install appropriate HIPAA security policies software to be able to reduce the risk of data violations and also to ensure data security and automate regulating HIPAA compliance. Therefore, most covered entities search for options that will solve security configuration management and can provide continuous monitoring to detect event problems. It is extremely beneficial to allow them to use software that monitors and information access and all user activities within information systems, containing ePHI.

There are much more tips to help you meet HIPAA conformity requirements. That is only a brief summary of most of the major points. If you consider you're a covered entity, you really have to keep updates with recent regulations because they apply to your specific organization.

For getting more information about Business continuity plan templates visit the website https://www.supremusgroup.com/business-contingency-strategy/contingency-planning/