Why a HIPAA Manual Won’t Protect You from Audits

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HERE IS HOW

When the regulation was first released, HIPAA manuals were an effective way for health care professionals to address the law.

However, in the 21 years since HIPAA was first enacted, the regulatory requirements have changed significantly. These days, with all the new rules and guidance that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has released, a simple HIPAA manual is not considered an effective compliance solution for your behavioral health practice.

Protecting your practice in the 21^st century takes more than a dusty HIPAA policy binder. To keep ahead of the $17.1 million in fines levied since the start of 2017 alone, health care professionals need to ensure that they have a HIPAA compliance program in place that addresses the full extent of the law.

Why Isn’t a HIPAA Manual Enough?

According to HIPAA regulation, HIPAA policies and procedures need to be reviewed and updated annually. Your practice goes through changes all year long–employees are hired and fired, you might open a new office, or maybe you’ve adopted a new EHR platform.

Policies and procedures must be tailored to the unique needs of your practice, so these yearly changes need to be reflected in your organization’s HIPAA policies and procedures.

If you’re utilizing a HIPAA manual, it doesn’t have the functionality you need to effectively review and update your policies and procedures. Instead, policy binders must be replaced every year in order to maintain your organization’s HIPAA compliance. HIPAA regulation also mandates that, in addition to policies being updated each year, all staff members must be trained on these new policies annually.

A HIPAA Compliance Program that Changes with Your Practice

HIPAA compliance solutions that automatically track the status of your organization’s compliance are a key way to ensure that you are keeping up with the regulatory requirements of the law.

When looking for a HIPAA compliance solution that suits the needs of your behavioral health practice, be sure to check if policies and procedures are included. These policies and procedures should be directly tied to HIPAA audits that you conduct within your own practice to expose areas where you aren’t in compliance with the law. These ‘gaps’ in compliance feed directly into your remediation plans, which then inform the extent of the policies and procedures you need to adopt in your practice.

Your potential HIPAA compliance solution should also include an employee training module based on the policies and procedures that you’ve customized and adopted in your practice. Again, make sure that the solution you’re considering sets these tasks up on an ongoing annual basis.

And of course, when it comes to HIPAA, documentation is king. The solution you’re looking at should include full documentation–preferably automated–so that you can pull yearly reports to demonstrate the status of your organization’s HIPAA compliance.

HIPAA Resources

Compliancy Group gives behavioral health professionals confidence in their HIPAA compliance with The Guard™. The Guard is a web-based HIPAA compliance solution, built by former auditors to help simplify compliance.

Compliancy Group’s team of expert Compliance Coaches™ field questions and guide users through the implementation process, taking the stress out of managing compliance. The Guard is built to address the full extent of HIPAA regulation, including fully automated documentation of policies, procedures, employee training, and remediation plans. The Guard includes policies and procedures that are uniquely tailored to the needs of your organization so you’ll never have to worry about the headaches that come with generic policy binders again.

With The Guard, behavioral health professionals can focus on running their practice while keeping their patients’ data protected and secure.

For more information about what you can do to protect your behavioral health practice, see these upcoming HIPAA educational webinars.

Find out more about how Compliancy Group and the HIPAA Seal of Compliance can help simplify your HIPAA compliance today!

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