4 HIPAA Compliance Best Practices

Here Are 4 HIPAA Compliance Best Practices

HIPAA compliance is not an entirely straightforward process. Compliance is complex, and there is a critical element of assessment and planning that needs to go into your compliance strategy. HIPAA compliance has a long list of requirements, and overlooking even a single one can mean serious consequences for your business.

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How To Tackle HIPAA Compliance

These four tips will help give you a clearer idea of where your practice currently stands, and help you better understand the HIPAA rules as you prepare to make the changes needed to reach compliance. The key to each of these tips is to consider how your IT company can assist with them.

Whether you’re managing your HIPAA compliance on your own, or you’ve invested in healthcare IT solutions for your practice, you need to have a strategy in place. Have you taken care of the following?

1. Give The Proper Responsibilities To The Proper Individuals
You'll need to appoint a Privacy and a Security Officer as part of your HIPAA requirements. While not specifically asked for, you'll also need to have members of your team handling compliance documentation. Individuals with good organizational and writing skills are needed in this position, given that documenting your actions is a huge part of HIPAA compliance. A designated Security Officer and clear documentation are required to meet the Administrative Safeguards.

2. Make Sure Your Staff Contributes To Compliance
An effective HIPAA compliance plan has to teach your staff how to handle a range of potential situations:

• How to participate in compliance best practices
• How to identify and address suspicious emails, phishing attempts, social engineering tactics, and more.
• How to use business technology without exposing patient data and other assets to external threats by accident.
• How to respond when you suspect that your organization is noncompliant.

3. Plan Ahead For Future Audits and Reviews
You are required by HIPAA to regularly revisit your HIPAA compliance policies and procedures in order to make sure they keep in line with changes to regulations, and changes within your organization. The more meticulous and systematic your documentation is to start off with, the easier it will be to go back and make periodic reviews or make adjustments down the road.

4. Don’t Assume You’re Invulnerable
You’ll never be so compliant and so secure that you’re risk-free. This entire process is about minimizing, not eliminating risk. That’s why you need a plan in place for when you suspect you have experienced a breach or become noncompliant. Have contingencies in place for the worst-case scenarios, so that you’re never caught off guard.

If you start with these four points, you’ll at least have a foundation in place for your HIPAA compliance. If you think it sounds complicated, well, you’re right - but the good news is you don’t have to handle it alone.

On Time Tech delivers robust IT services and support for healthcare organizations like yours, supporting HIPAA compliance with proven best practices.

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