5 Tips for Remaining HIPAA Compliant
As Amazon’s Alexa becomes increasingly concerned with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance, we thought we’d share five quick tips to help keep individual physician practices HIPAA compliant.
Backup & Failover
Having a backup of your data is critical; making sure that your data is backed up correctly is equally as important. Ask your IT support to conduct a regular audit, and be aware of where and how frequently backups are being created and stored. If the worst occurs, make sure that your team has a functioning failover plan that can be expediently deployed so that your practice experiences the least amount of impact on regular operations.
Vet Your Business Associates
You should maintain a regularly updated list of business associates, storing signed Business Associate Agreements in a secure and centralized location. Limit your liability and know and control who handles your patient's protected health information.
Monitor Employees
Have your practice manager or IT team regularly audit who has access to what. Taking the time to make sure that your employees are operating within the parameters of best practices can potentially save you the headache (and cost) of compromised security. Keep your policies and procedures updated, differentiating between users, limiting rights, and terminating user rights for employees leaving the practice.
Security Risk Assessments
The technology you use, software, and hardware that you keep in your practice’s environment (both electronically and physically) are constantly changing. Ongoing security risk assessments should work to help you identify the protections you currently have in place against the vulnerabilities that may present themselves.
Outsource
Ensure that your IT helpdesk or Managed Service Provider is well acquainted with the rigorous and changing environment of HIPAA compliance standards, and security risks that healthcare organizations face. Finding the right team can save you money by avoiding the expense and risk of litigation and burdensome fines.
If you were a vegan, would you eat at a steakhouse? Sure, they make food, but they don’t make the food you require to sustain your diet. In the same way, don’t just bring on any managed service provider – bring in an MSP that has experience in healthcare. Here’s our shameless self-promotion – our team has over 13 years of experience in the healthcare sector, and we pride ourselves in supporting compliant environments while establishing optimal practice workflow.
Looking for more tips? As always, we encourage readers to consult with the enormous amount resources available from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services here.
