Managing Your Risk with HIPAA

There is a lot to unpack with HIPAA law. It may seem like it's more work than it's worth, but unfortunately, it needs to be addressed. HIPAA isn’t all bad. Did you know HIPAA can help you manage your risk in several ways?

  1. HIPAA Security Risk Assessments limit the likelihood of hacking incidents
  2. Policies and procedures limit the risk of improper use and disclosure of protected health information (PHI)
  3. Business associate agreements limit liability when your business associate violates HIPAA
  4. Implementing a HIPAA compliance program reduces the risk of fines

HIPAA Security Risk Assessments and Hacking

HIPAA Security Risk Assessments (SRAs) are important in improving your organization’s cybersecurity practices. While SRAs are an annual HIPAA requirement, there are other reasons to conduct yours.

A risk assessment measures your current security practices against HIPAA standards. Once completed, deficiencies in your security are identified, enabling you to use this information to improve your security.

Identifying your weaknesses is essential to prevent hacking incidents. By doing so, you can better prepare your organization by implementing additional security measures to prevent an incident from occurring. This is referred to as implementing remediation plans.


Policies and Procedures and Use and Disclosure of PHI

Policies and procedures provide guidelines for properly using and disclosing protected health information by your organization and staff. A significant number of healthcare breaches occur because healthcare workers are unaware of how PHI should be shared. By clearly outlining how your organization uses and discloses PHI, and having policies and procedures to limit PHI access, the likelihood of “insider breaches” reduces dramatically.


Business Associate Agreements and HIPAA Violations

Business associate agreements (BAAs) are an integral part of HIPAA. Your organization must have signed BAAs with each of your business associate vendors. A BAA is a legal contract that states that each signing party is HIPAA compliant, and will maintain their compliance. A BAA limits your organization’s liability if your business associate is breached.


HIPAA Compliance Program and Fines

Ultimately, implementing an effective HIPAA compliance program is the best way to manage risk. Your program should include security risk assessments, remediation, policies and procedures, and business associate agreements. It should also include employee training and incident management.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigates healthcare organizations’ HIPAA compliance. These investigations usually result from a breach or patient complaint. When the OCR finds an organization’s compliance program lacking, the organization may be subject to costly fines.

To protect your organization from fines, you must ensure that you meet each of HIPAA’s requirements.


Contributed by Compliancy Group

Track and manage all your healthcare compliance requirements with customizable software. Compliancy Group’s software offers a robust toolset, advanced program customization options, and risk analysis to optimize the execution of ongoing compliance objectives. Get an overview of your compliance readiness and easily generate reports to prove your compliance efforts. Expedite incident reporting and response management, record all the efforts, and identify organizational risk with a complete set of ticketing, tracking, and analysis tools.

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