Introduction

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is a US law that has set the regulations for healthcare providers, insurance companies, and business associates to safeguard the protected health information of the patients.

  • The other important aspect of HIPAA is to ensure that all the participants continue to get their health insurance coverage at the time of change or losing their jobs.
  • These two are considered as the important parts of HIPAA. However, there are 3 more parts which include, tax-related health provisions, Enforcement of group health plans, and revenue offsets.

In this section, we will concentrate more on the administrative simplification regulation of HIPAA, which contributes more towards compliance and how HIPAA Compliance help services can help protect from violating HIPAA regulations.

All parties involved in handling and operating the health information must abide by the HIPAA regulations. Following this regulation to ensure that data privacy and security are met is considered as HIPAA compliance met.

Things to have an effective compliance program

  • The health and human services department that regulates the HIPAA has provided a basic guideline for an effective compliance program.
  • Conduct frequent training programs for the people involved in handling protected personal health information of the patients.
  • Create policies and have them documented and circulated to all the teams involved.
  • Have a designated compliance team that performs regular internal audits to ensure that they meet the standards set.
  • Work on the areas where the defects are found and have strict disciplinary action if compliance is compromised.

These steps can help reduce the HIPAA violations thereby saving you from paying penalties.

What is a HIPAA violation and how to handle it?

  • As per HIPAA, all the health care organizations and health care providers must have a strict compliance program in place, so that the PHI is not compromised. Any kind of breach in the compliance program is called a HIPAA violation and it can lead to paying a penalty.
  • A data breach and HIPAA violation are not the same. The data hacked from an unencrypted system is a data breach, which is not considered a violation.
  • However, if this breach has happened because there was no proper compliance program in the organization, then it will be considered as a HIPAA violation and penalties will be levied based on the size of the data breach.
  • All the data breaches must be reported to the HHS within 60 days of the incident and the same will be notified to the affected participants.

Handling these things might be a complicated task, for organizations. Therefore they can always look for the HIPAA compliance help services offered by the consulting services.

What do they do?

  • They take the responsibility to collect, store and transfer health data in a secured way, thus ensuring the HIPAA violation is avoided.
  • They take care of the complex technical and policy work, thus ensuring to,
  • Stop data breaches, that might happen with the unencrypted systems.
  • Avoid the situation io paying penalties due to violation.
  • Provide proper training to the employees regarding the compliance programs.
  • Identify and enforce limited access to required employees that handle protected health information.
  • Take care of all the HIPAA compliance policies, procedures, and documentation.

Conclusion

The above information helps in understanding the HIPAA violations and how the HIPAA compliance consulting services can help in assisting and meeting the compliance regulations.