The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a federal law that provides minimum requirements for protecting certain health information. For anyone who handles medical records or works with patient data, an understanding of the basic HIPAA requirements is crucial.
Because of the kind of information HIPAA protects, the penalties can be quite severe—even unknowing or accidental violations can result in fines up to $50,000 per violation.
If your health organization handles sensitive and personal data, you’ll want to know about the most common HIPAA compliance issues and how to address them.
The 7 Most Common HIPAA Compliance Issues
- Failing to Conduct Security Risk Analysis
- Lack of Adequate Security Controls
- Inadequate Device Security Protections
- Failing to Conduct Vendor Due Diligence
- Outdated HIPAA Policies and Procedures
- Failing to Implement Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
- Lack of Comprehensive Employee Training
1. Security Risk Analysis
An important part of HIPAA compliance, and an area which most audited businesses fail to address, is conducting an enterprise-wide security risk analysis through a trusted managed service provider (MSP), like Meeting Tree Computer. The purpose of conducting a risk analysis is to identify gaps and vulnerabilities in your organization’s security practices. HIPAA requires you to conduct a risk analysis annually, or whenever there are changes to your business operations.
2. Security Controls
Implementing advanced security controls is the best way to prevent unauthorized access to protected health information (PHI). Security controls may include encryption to prevent unauthorized users from accessing data, access controls to designate different levels of access to data based on an employee’s job role, and audit controls to track access to data.
3. Device Security Protections
With the increase in remote work, device security protections have never been more important. Many remote workers use personal devices to conduct business, however, before permitting an employee to do so, it is essential to ensure that their personal devices have adequate security protections in place.
4. Vendor Due Diligence
Many organizations fail to conduct vendor due diligence when considering new partners in business. Unfortunately, cyber incidents like the one Target fell victim to show that their vulnerabilities are ultimately your vulnerabilities. When you fail to vet vendors, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will hold you liable should your vendor experience a breach. To conduct vendor due diligence, you must send your vendors a risk analysis much like the one you are required to complete. You must also have a signed business associate agreement (BAA) with your vendors before you are permitted to share PHI with them.
5. HIPAA Policies and Procedures
HIPAA policies and procedures are an important aspect of preventing HIPAA compliance issues. Policies and procedures provide your organization and employees with guidelines on the proper uses and disclosures of PHI, how to protect PHI, and how to report a breach should one occur.
6. Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
As more and more healthcare organizations fall victim to cyberattacks that maliciously encrypt their data, implementing a data backup and disaster recovery plan is the key to a quick recovery. HIPAA requires you to retain exact copies of PHI in both local and offsite data locations so that in the event of a breach or natural disaster, files can be easily accessible.
7. Employee Training
In most industries, it is hackers and other cybercriminals that are responsible for the majority of security breaches, but in healthcare it is insiders. Lack of training is one of the most common violations for organizations not fully familiar with HIPAA regulations.
Employee training is integral to HIPAA compliance. HIPAA laws require all employees, volunteers, interns, and anyone with access to patient information to be trained on HIPAA basics, your organization’s policies and procedures, and cybersecurity best practices.
It may seem like a tedious process to be HIPPA compliant, but Meeting Tree Computer takes all the hassle away and ensure your peace of mind remains intact. All you have to do is give us a call and we’ll take it from there: (845) 237-2117.
