Implementing a HIPAA compliance program at your organization is essential to guarantee that your organization is compliant with all rules and regulations laid out in the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules. Having a HIPAA compliance program in place is essential to ensure that all sensitive records, especially medical records, are secure and adequately protected from security breaches.
If you are looking to safeguard sensitive customer information while complying with all rules and regulations laid out in the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, follow these steps to learn how to implement HIPAA security at your organization successfully.
Step 1) Appoint a Privacy and Security Officer
The first step on your HIPAA compliance checklist should be to appoint a privacy and security officer who oversees implementation and ensuring that your HIPAA compliance program is not only useful but efficient as well. The most important part of this step is to create written policies, procedures, and standards of conduct for everyone at the business to follow. When developing, adopting, and implementing privacy and security policies and procedures, it is essential that all policies and procedures including steps to ensure an effective program are carefully documented.
Step 2) Conduct Risk Assessments
It’s essential to conduct regular risk assessments for your HIPAA compliance program to remain active. While conducting a risk assessment, it’s important to review your workplace and electronic devices and assess the potential risk and vulnerabilities of the ePHI (electronic protected health information) your business possesses. While you can perform this assessment yourself, it is highly recommended that a third-party company that specializes in risk assessment complete this step for your company.
Step 3) Training and Education
Once you have appointed your privacy and security officers, created written policies, procedures, and standards, and assessed your HIPAA compliance program, it’s time to train and educate employees on the HIPAA Rules and your HIPAA compliance program. Without proper training, your organization could fail at HIPAA compliance.
It’s not enough to only implement a HIPAA compliance program; it is essential to create proper written policies, procedures, and standards of conduct for everyone to follow, as well as train employees effectively and continually assess your program to ensure its effectiveness. While an effective HIPAA compliance program requires a proper HIPAA compliance checklist, the best way to reach full HIPAA security is to perform an annual HIPAA audit on your policies and procedures. Without doing so, it could be challenging to ensure that you comply with all HIPAA laws.
