Be Compliant or Be Fined

Be compliant or be fined. While that statement may seem harsh and unforgiving, when it comes to protecting the privacy of your patients that is the only way to look at things. To help safeguard the medical information of patients, the government implemented the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This law requires a strict adherence to policies and regulations to ensure the protection of all patient data.

Anyone working within the medical profession knows the importance of staying up-to-date and compliant with all HIPAA rules and regulations. Unfortunately, for many in the medical profession that have to keep records up-to-date and ensure all decisions are HIPAA compliant, this is just one big task in a sea of never-ending stressors and work. This is why a policy management software such as The Guard is so useful to any office or hospital.

Just as any law, there are many changes that occur every year. As technology grows, so does the importance of complying with each of these changes. A well-built policy management tool will update as the laws change and offer checklists to ensure the entire office is in compliance with the strict HIPAA laws.

For those that fail to meet the requirements of HIPAA rules, strict punishment is enforced. Hospitals have been fined almost a quarter of a million dollars for failing to comply, as well as a host of other fines, fees, and stipulations. Even worse than the monetary cost to an organization is the trust factor. A patient and their doctor have a special bond that relies on honesty and trust. Hospitals and organizations that do not take that bond seriously run the risk of losing the trust of their patients, making their job more difficult or their care less effective.

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Policy Management Software

As organizations grow, they face a continuous increase in the number and complexity of policies and procedures that staff members need to share and collaborate with one another. This is one of the biggest challenges for organizations of all types and sizes. It involves demonstrating compliance to auditors and the best practices to staff. This is required not just at periodic intervals, but also continuously and instantly to a variety of stakeholders.

It is essential to have high quality policy management software to help a company to be on top of itself. Such software allows users to create and refine policies and procedures in compliance with standards that are relevant. When policies are not maintained properly, its value decreases and the policy loses its authority and relevance.

Increasing regulatory requirements these days necessitates organizations be proactive in their management of important documents. Having up-to-date policy reduces the chance of liability and demonstrates an organization is acting in solid governance to government authorities, outside organizations, and even itself.

Misplaced documentation (either through poor organizational structure or poor systems architecture) can cost an organization valuable time, energy, and resources. The easier it is for staff to find documents and update them in a distributed real-time manner, the easier it is to ensure that the most up-to-date information is at the fingertips of those who need it. It is very helpful to have a means of recovering information if portions of a company’s policies, procedures, and guidelines are missing or no longer relevant. This aids in the flexibility of an organization tobounce back on its feet during times of change or disarray.

An end-to-end policy management package ensures that the creation, preservation, and deletion of information in the documentation occur in a step-by-step procedural manner. This process should be free from obstacles such as interference from conflicting processes, confusion on what processes are involved, and confusion as to the roles and responsibilities of who updates what and is accountable for what. A good policy management system takes all of these factors into account, while delegating authority and authorship as needed.

A proper policy management system will not only save time and energy but ultimately the bottom line expenses. There are a countless number of lost work hours that result from creating, recreating, and updating an organization’s policy in an inefficient manner. A seamless process in this regard allows an organization to use human resources elsewhere by taking care of the overhead.

In summary, good policy management software helps an organization maintain rigorous control over its infrastructure, track usage, update, and assimilate various components distributed throughout the organization. It gives individuals in the company a solid means of tracking policy changes and ensuring that authority in updates is delegated, and escalated, to the right parties at the right time. It can continuously reduce ineffective workflows by tracking changes throughout the process without the stopping and backtracking associated with manual policy management.

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HIPAA Compliance Checklist

Once you've concluded you are handling protected health information (PHI), you will have to ensure your organization is HIPAA compliant. Compliance with HIPAA requires going through a series of steps that, altogether achieved, ensure you are in-line with the regulations set forth by the Department of Health and Human Services for patient health records.

Compliance achievement can take the form of checklist that walks through the 4 sets of rules within HIPAA: The Privacy Rule, Security Rule, Enforcement Rule, and Breach Notification Rule. While it is beyond the scope of this article to provide a comprehensive breakdown, we will provide a basic overview of what such a checklist entails.

The Privacy Rule presents standards that protect health records that apply to various health care providers that conduct their transactions electronically. It involves preventing impermissible uses of the PHI, ensure breach notification procedures are in place, ensure appropriate access to the PHI, and provide disclosures to the Secretary of HHS as needed.

The HIPAA Security Rule ensures that various safeguards are in place on Technical, Physical, and Administrative levels. Some are designated as 'required', and others designated as 'addressable' (required for certain organizations).

Technical safeguards deal with: unique user identification, emergency access procedures, automatic logoff, encryption/decryption, audit controls, and authentication systems and methods. Physical safeguards deal with the physical location and the facilities themselves, including: contingency operations, security plans, access control, maintenance records, workstation use, workstation security, disposal of documents, accountability, and data backup/storage procedures.

Administrative safeguards cover the conduct of workers in the organization, and provide measures in place to protect PHI. It requires establishing a privacy officer, conducting staff training, review documentation on a regular basis, performing a risk assessment, creating agreements with the various Business Associates (BA) that partner with your organization.

The Enforcement Rule and Breach Notification Rule are not necessarily actionable in advance, but they spell out the penalties and procedures for hearings related to HIPAA non-compliance, as well as procedures for dealing with a breach of unsecured PHI.

Though seemingly daunting, the HIPAA compliance checklist rules can be applied and enforced in your organization in a systematic manner through a checklist. In addition, automatic tools can enhance the value of a checklist by having systematized procedures to bring your organization into compliance.

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