HIPAA and Privacy Act Training – Set, Assign, and Deliver!
A caregiver’s duty to patients is not just about ensuring that patients receive the correct treatment. It is also about ensuring that their personal health information remains private and secure. Hence, the HIPAA and Privacy Act training is crucial for organizations that maintain or handle the flow of patients’ health information.
All the patients have a right to privacy and security. People need to be confident that the sensitive information they share is not available to the public unless they give consent. The HIPAA Privacy Rule addresses precisely these kinds of issues. Under the HIPAA law, the Privacy Rule establishes national standards for protecting certain health information, more commonly known as protected health information (PHI). It applies to all forms of individuals’ PHI, whether electronic, written, or oral. The primary objective of this Rule is to safeguard patients’ health information while allowing the smooth flow of information needed to provide high-quality care and to protect the public’s health and well-being. Ultimately, it strikes a balance that authorizes the use of important information while protecting the privacy of people who need care.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule covers a health care provider whether it electronically transmits this information directly or uses a third party or other billing services to do so on their behalf.
According to the Privacy Rule, an average health care provider or health plan is required to enforce a few activities, such as:
- Notifying patients about their rights to privacy and how their information can be used.
- Developing and implementing privacy procedures for its hospital, practice, or plan.
- Training members of the workforce so that they understand the privacy procedures.
- Designating a Privacy Officer who will be responsible for overseeing that the privacy procedures are adopted and followed.
- Ensuring the security of patient records containing individually identifiable information so that they are not accessible by those who do not need them.
HIPAA and the Privacy Act Training
There’s more to HIPAA compliance than just enforcing strong passwords and encryption. If an organization handles sensitive information such as health records, then the law requires them to protect that information and ensure that their employees understand how to do this. This is why the HIPAA Privacy Act training is mandatory.
According to the HIPAA Privacy Rule Act, training must be provided to each new member of the workforce within a reasonable period of time after the person is hired or whenever there is a change in the company’s policies and procedures. To prove compliance, the training must be documented and attested by employees who have undergone training.
In practice, most organizations train their annually train employees on HIPAA. While this is a good practice, memories can fade quickly. Policies may change and then the fact that these changes were made may be forgotten. Employees need to be constantly reminded of what they must do because all it takes is just one memory lapse and then it’s game over. This is why regular training on the HIPAA Privacy Act, at least twice or thrice a year in addition to annual training, can be beneficial for employees and employers.
Sometimes it’s hard to sell training to upper management, even when it can tremendously reduce risks. They think it is waste of time or they do not have an efficient procedure in place to manage these training sessions and feel that is a burden to undertake this whole process.
But worry not. You are in the right place.
Set, Assign, and Deliver with HIPAA Ready
CloudApper’s HIPAA compliance software, HIPAA Ready is the perfect compliance automation tool for you. This robust software application allows administrators to easily add new HIPAA training courses, assign trainees, set a training schedule, and effortlessly create details of the training. All employees can access this information with their mobile devices and ensure that they have completed and are up to date with all the necessary training and information required to ensure their procedures and practices are HIPAA compliant.
In addition to training management, HIPAA Ready is a complete package where you can streamline and fulfill your record-keeping requirements, such as policy management, incident management, business associates management, risk assessments, and much more with just a few simple clicks.
A 14-day feel trial is available now. Hurry up and get in touch with CloudApper today to learn more about HIPAA Ready!
