The most important aspect of HIPAA compliance is to understand the need for compliance. The HIPAA protocol that was established states the areas where one needs to work for perfect compliance and at the same time understand the areas where there are chances to make improvements. With HIPAA audit formalities help in ascertaining compliance of HIPAA privacy policy and understanding the standard of work.
The Notice of HIPAA Privacy Policy needs to have all the requirements as defined by the HIPAA regulations are as follows:
- Header
- Permitted uses and disclosures
- Uses and disclosures requiring an opportunity to agree or object
- Uses and disclosures requiring an Authorization
- Individual rights to PHI
- Covered entity’s duties
- Right to complain and description of how
- Contact at the covered entity
- State Law Preemption
All the mentioned areas have complete detailed information that needs to include the organization’s Notice of Privacy Practices. There are tools that help in evaluating the present level of compliance with your Notice of Privacy Practices as per rules stated by the HIPAA Audit Protocol. .
To ascertain that compliance is complete with the regulation the following conditions need to be established:
- Organization’s Notice of Privacy Practices
- Notice of Privacy Practices Policy and Procedure
- Acknowledge Form of the Notice of Privacy Practices (for signatures)
- Making the notice available on the organization’s website
- Posting the notice in your organization’s physical location(s)
The four steps that can help in ascertaining HIPAA Security Rule and ensure compliance are as follows:
- Audit of HIPAA compliance: the first step for ensuring compliance is to check the company gets audited. This will help you to know the areas of improvements, risks, and vulnerabilities. It is better to first get an internal check done before connecting with any outside auditor for checking the compliance. In this concept, technical, physical, and administrative safeguard assessment needs to be checked. An unnecessary data breach or unauthorized access is to be removed. Here any physical theft and loss of devices containing PHI in the devices need to be protected. Under administrative safeguards, it is important that the patient data is accessible only to correct and authorized personnel. If the safeguards are strong in all the three ways compliance with the Security Rule by HIPAA is assured.
- Identify and document all the deficiencies- identify the deficiencies and the areas of risks or vulnerabilities. For ascertaining the deficiencies it is important to know the HIPAA rules and regulations. For complete knowledge ascertain the HHS Audit Protocol or the HIPAA Rule.
- Plan the ways to remove the deficiencies- once you are aware of the deficiencies the next best thing to be done is to ascertain the aspects and try to overcome them. There can be technical, physical, and administrative safeguards.
- Ensure that all Business Associates are HIPAA compliant- after ensuring that your company is HIPAA compliant it is important to assure that all the Business Associates are also HIPAA compliant. It includes software solutions vendors and their associates.
HIPAA compliance and checking if the company is HIPAA compliant or not it is important to ascertain the rules and protocols to be followed for compliance. There are several aspects of HIPAA privacy rules that help in ascertaining if HIPAA Compliance Certification is complete or not. With the help of the HIPAA audit, it can ascertain the degree of compliance and the areas of vulnerabilities or risks. After a complete assessment of the risk areas there needs to be steps taken to overcome the deficiencies and make the company fully HIPAA compliant. After the compliance is fully achieved it is important to check if the business associates are compliant or not.