Easy Steps to Protect Patient Health Information

Your patients’ health information requires careful safeguarding. When the security of this information is breached, your practice may face not only serious HIPAA-related penalties, but you risk the personal and financial security of patients who trust you. Therefore, it is important to take certain steps to ensure this information stays safe.

Because so much of this information is now stored online, it is increasingly vital that practices enlist the help of technology experts. These professionals can help encrypt and secure information that might otherwise be vulnerable to a cyber-breach. Additionally, they offer the security of regular risk analyses that will identify areas where your PHI may not be safe.

Cyber risk analyses are part of a large condition under HIPAA that requires health care practices to conduct annual risk assessments. These practices go a long way to keeping your PHI safe. By working with an independent auditing team, you will be able to identify problems within your training, storing or sending practices that will allow you to take measures to correct these issues. Maintaining a HIPAA compliant environment is not something that can be done once. It requires continual training and monitoring of changes within the law and ways to correct security vulnerabilities.

It is important to communicate your compliance rules to all of your staff. HIPAA compliance must happen at every level and even staff that does not have regular access to PHI should be aware of the rules. By incorporating compliance training into the daily lives of all of your employees, you will be able to make the protection of PHI a fundamental part of your practice.

If you have further questions about protecting patient health information, contact the New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania health care law attorneys with Buttaci Leardi & Werner, LLC.

Tagged with: cyber risk, HIPAA, patient health information

• Posted on: Feb 16 2015