Own a Clinic? How to Keep Your Facility HIPAA Compliant

When you own a clinic there are so many details that you have to attend to. While caring for patients is certainly at the top of the list, there are other cogs in the wheel that have to run properly to keep your facility running. One of these aspects involves the issue of maintaining compliance with the United States Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA.) While this law has a lot of different components, it mainly deals with privacy issues.

Your patients deserve to know that the information they share with your clinic won't leave the premises. Here are a few techniques you can use to make sure that your staff understands how important it is to be in compliance with HIPAA laws.

Hold Trainings on a Regular Basis

Although most medical professionals will have to complete some form of education that stresses the importance of HIPAA, it never hurts to have a refresher. You may have new members on board who need to know just how vital it is for them to always maintain the highest level of regard for the medical history of the patients they deal with. Training them on this gives you the opportunity to keep everyone up to speed so that you can minimize the chance that there will be a violation.

The training needs to cover as many different facets as possible. For example, let your team know that privacy pertains to both verbal and written information. If a nurse has a bad interaction with a patient they should understand that it's not okay to find that person on social media and send them an angry message. What happens at the office needs to stay there and your staff must understand how HIPAA applies to various situations.

Post Up the Proper Signage

Posting signs is also a great way to make sure that everyone knows about HIPAA. Post signs reminding your crew to shut down workstations after putting in patient data and always put paper documents back into the proper file. These are little things that might seem to be obvious, but on a busy day when your staff is seeing a lot of people it's easy to forget these tidbits. The signs you post can help.

Staying HIPPA compliant can help you avoid a lot of unnecessary issues. Learn more about how you can improve your work space by contacting services such as HIPAA Solutions.