Health care providers and professionals will need to meet the standards that are prescribed by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to safeguard the protected information of patients. Organizations that are classified as covered entities as per HIPAA will need to ensure that the workplace where the confidential information of patients is stored is secure and safe.
What Are The Top 7 Steps To Secure A HIPAA Workplace?
1. As all the confidential information is stored on computers it is important that they are password protected. This will ensure that only authorized individuals would be able to access it. These passwords should only be assigned to people who will have access to the protected information. They should not be shared with anyone and employees must also avoid writing them down.
2. If the protected information is stored on disks or other equipment, it must be kept in a safe place and its access should be restricted. It is advisable not to store this sensitive information on floppy drives and other such devices that are not secure.
3. There should also be firewalls and anti-virus programs that need to installed on all the electronic equipments that is used to store the protected information. This will ensure that the information is safe and secure from internal and external abuse.
4. If the protected information of the patient is no longer needed it can be destroyed. Do remember to follow the various guidelines that are specified in this regard. You can use a shredder to destroy all the records. You should never throw the records without shredding them properly as they can be misused.
5. The most important aspect of securing the HIPAA workplace would be to train the employees who will be accessing this protected information so that they are better equipped to handle all the information that passes through them.
6. The training program will enable them to learn about the various rules and regulations of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This will help in better compliance as they will now become aware about the kind of information that they can share and those that cannot be shared under any circumstances.
7. If any employee becomes aware of any violation of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act they should inform the concerned authorities in the organization so that remedial steps can be taken.
All these steps will ensure that the protected information of patients is safe from misuse. However if there are any instances of violation it is important that they are reported at the earliest so that preventive steps can be enforced and the misuse stopped.
There should be a written or oral permission from the patient if the information needs to be accessed for any other purpose other than treatment. Most of the violations that happen are unintentional and even these need to be avoided as the HIPAA act does not make any discrimination between intentional and unintentional violations. The penalties (fines and imprisonment) would vary based on the extent and nature of the violations.
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