If you underwent a HIPAA audit tomorrow, would you pass? HIPAA compliance is no joke. Hospitals, clinics, healthcare providers, as well as business associates who provide services to these organizations are all required to be HIPAA compliant. By failing to plan and having the proper processes in place, you are planning to fail — and that can mean hefty fines. If you aren’t sure if the guidelines you have in place are enough to pass an audit, you can start by working through this HIPAA audit checklist.
Where to Start?
It all begins with being organized. One of the biggest challenges that organizations face when being audited is meeting the deadline to respond to the initial audit document request. Since you will have to submit every HIPAA plan and document on record, it is imperative that you have all policies and procedures, in addition to all PHI disclosure logs and security incident documentation stored and organized.
Review
Not only should your patient records be organized, they need to be analyzed. Many organizations have the correct documentation in order, so they think they’re fine. After further analyzation although, many policies were found to be incomplete or very outdated.
Risk Assessment
Risk assessments may be the most important parts of the HIPAA compliance programs. It’s wise to consult with a professional to help with this. They can conduct a mock audit in order to discover your organization’s potential risks and vulnerabilities to the confidentiality of your records.
Take Action
After a risk assessment has been conducted, it’s imperative to implement changes. A risk assessment is virtually useless and ineffective if you do not find and implement solutions to address the problems that you’ve discovered.
Get Everyone on the Same Page
When you learn of an impending audit, there is no time to waste with informing employees. Internal relations is extremely important when it comes to HIPAA compliance. All staff must be educated about fraud and data security management.
Information Technology Integration
If you’re still keeping records on paper files, it’s about time for an upgrade to digital storage. This is a much more efficient and organized way of storing information. All of your data is easily accessible at the click of a button, and it can all be safely secured with password encryption. Whatever digital storage solution you decide to use, make sure your data is being encrypted before it’s ever uploaded to the cloud. Without this important step, you may be leaving your patients’ information vulnerable.
As for where you store your documents, never use public file transfer protocol or keep information in public content management systems, such as Google Docs. Since these patient information files are extremely important records, a secure cloud backup solution is highly recommended to ensure your files are safe always accessible.
Encryption
HIPAA compliance requires a minimum of 128-bit encryption to safeguard the confidentiality, integrity and availability of ePHI. While data encryption is another critical factor in protecting information, it isn’t something most organizations know how to do. This is why you should find a cloud backup company that offers multiple levels of security, from encryption all the way up to secure data centers.
Adhering to these helpful tips will help you avoid hefty fines, not to mention save an incredible amount of time and stress if an audit comes your way. Overall, it really pays off to stay organized and keep your files secure and easily accessible. This is one reason why everyone is now backing up all their files using cloud storage and backup. Click here for more information on how cloud storage can benefit you and get a FREE trial for 30 days with Nordic Backup.
