Steps to HIPPA Security Compliance
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) places a large regulatory burden on organizations that deal with certain types of health-related information. Meeting HIPAA security compliance requirements begins with a security management solution one that enables real-time monitoring, compliance reporting and control management. The best route to compliance is the integration of existing people, processes, and policies with technology.
Here are a few steps to ensure HIPPA security compliance
Understand the significance of computer security
The main importance of computer security is to avoid personal health information from falling into the wrong hands or being inadvertently altered or destroyed. The HIPAA security standards apply to protected health information (PHI) that is either stored or transmitted electronically. The bottom line is this: Computer security is a requirement for any sound business, including your medical practice. Computer security is needed to protect the privacy of those whose information you store and manage. It is also needed to protect you and your practice from the risk of penalty and legal liability if private information is used or released by your practice
Ensure your staff takes security seriously
The HIPAA security standards require your practice to have written security policies and procedures, including those that cover personnel training and sanctions for security policy violations. Your office staff and colleagues must truly understand basic security logic and take their role in protecting patients’ privacy very, very seriously. Most security breaches occur when insiders – people working for the organization – exercise faulty judgment or fail to follow protocols in which they’ve been trained.
Record all the information system components pertaining to PHI
To assess your office’s current security risk, it is necessary to know the capabilities and weaknesses of your information systems. As no two medical practices have exactly the same information system components, it is necessary to make a detailed list of all of the components that play a role in either storing patient health information or transmitting it within the practice or to outside settings. HIPAA HITECH requires you to carry out such a risk analysis which must be specific to your practice as it’s the only reasonable way to assess your risk of security breaches in your current systems and protocols.
Be prepared for any calamity
An important aspect of computer security involves protecting electronic data from loss or corruption. Although there are many ways data integrity can be affected, the most common is loss of data from some sort of emergency or disaster, including human error, mechanical hard disk failure, equipment damage due to flooding, or computer virus infection. A solid computer-system contingency plan is composed of a number of steps, including performing backups, preparing for continued operations in an emergency and recovering from a disaster. The most important part of a contingency plan is having a backup system.
Recognize the need for encryption
HIPAA security standards do not require e-mails, or any other transmission from a doctor’s office, to be encrypted, contrary to what many people are saying. Electronic data encryption is a branch of cryptography. Encryption is the transformation of a message from plain text into cipher text before the message is sent. Anyone who steals the cipher text message will not be able to understand it. Only those who have the code used to encrypt the message can convert it back from cipher to plain text and reveal its meaning.
Insist on vendors comprehending the HIPAA security standards.
A HIPPA security standard to a large extent relies on hardware, software, network and other information technology (IT) vendors. Their products and services, whether out-of-the-box computer hardware or hands-on-in-the-office IT services, will enable you to meet many of the security standards – or not. Be certain that your local contractor is fully aware of the HIPAA security standards and is willing to assist you before you proceed.
The actions necessary to become HIPAA compliant will vary as healthcare providers and organizations transfer their patient records to various electronic forms. Consulting with an experienced information security organization can greatly smooth this transition.
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