With the ever-increasing incidence of security threats that compromise patient information, compliance with HIPAA regulations is essential for today’s healthcare businesses. A large percentage of these regulations deal with healthcare IT solutions and ensuring that your business works with healthcare IT consultants who fully understand them.
Yet there is more to HIPAA compliance than just hiring the right healthcare IT services. Consider the 5 tips below to ensure your business is safe against some of the most common, yet easily addressed HIPAA compliance threats.
1. Create A Company Security Policy
Before any company can expect to be compliant, it is necessary to develop a company policy that addresses security. Policies should address access and controls, processes, employees, all connected devices, and all company procedures. It should be developed with the help of healthcare IT consultants who can plan these security programs with you.
Your policy should outline healthcare IT services and how to keep all IT secure. It should also be reviewed yearly and updated as necessary to reflect company or compliance regulation changes.
2. Educate Employees
With a company security policy in place, you should focus on employee education and training as a major part of your security healthcare IT solutions. Most security breaches happen because of poor user behavior.
Reduce this significant threat by making sure that all employees understand the significance of IT security and why they are expected to work within your company policy to maintain HIPAA compliance.
3. Secure All IoT Devices
Another considerable security threat is the many devices that you and your employees use on a day-to-day basis. Laptops and phones are more obvious and security with these devices is improving. Yet they are not the only connected devices that healthcare businesses currently use.
Expert healthcare IT services now take the Internet of Things (IoT) and all connected biomedical devices into account since they can be breached as well. Any device that records, stores, or transmits PHI must be appropriately protected and incorporated into your company’s security policy.
4. Online and Offline Backups
Although redundant online backups are important and less expensive than offline storage, healthcare IT consultants warn that healthcare businesses should not rely solely upon them. Offline backups and storage in addition to online backups provide the greatest security from data disasters that could affect the lives of your patients.
Compliment online storage by replicating data to cloud servers that can be taken offline as a protective measure to prevent unlawful access.
5. Educate Patients About PHI security
In addition to educating your staff about security risks, it is also important to make patient education about online security a part of your overall healthcare IT solutions. Patients are a main source of PHI cybersecurity threats. Those who request access to their personal records must understand that their information is at risk once it enters their hands. Patients must be instructed in the ways to protect their own personal information.
As a healthcare business owner, you must understand that HIPAA compliance with regard to digital information spans beyond simply contracting with an experienced healthcare IT services provider. Healthcare IT consultants can provide you with the secure network your business needs; however, you must also incorporate the other ideas referenced above into your security plan. Secure, compliant healthcare IT solutions comes from total compliance by all people who have access to PHI and protect all connected devices and data!
