The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA law was established in 1996 as a United States legislation, which provides data privacy and security provisions to safeguard medical information. Under this law, it is required to receive training in basic privacy and security practices for anyone who has access to Patient Health Information or PHI. This includes the people who work as healthcare decision makers, housekeeping staff, dietary workers, clerical staff, contract worker and of course, the clinical staff.
Compliance is just one of many reasons that bound workforce members to understand and follow basic privacy and security protocols. Training on HIPAA rules comes with several benefits:
Training can help to build precaution against any PHI loss
A traditional healthcare system has several employees and they have to communicate with patients’ multiple times a day. This creates the chance of exposing patient data or PHI. Proper training will ensure that every member of a healthcare system has an understanding of the privacy and security protocol, thus, building a precaution against PHI loss.
Training increases awareness of risks to patients’ well-being
Careless handling of PHI can pose a huge risk, many staff members at well-known healthcare systems aren’t aware of it. Training will help them to increase awareness and safekeeping patient records by giving specific instructions.
HIPAA Training prioritizes “patient safety” at healthcare systems
Training with appropriate structure and course design will help the staff to realize that HIPAA Privacy and Security rules and technology are important to keep patients safe. Training will spread the knowledge of handling patient information on “the right way” and increase the chance of noticing or correcting errors.
Patient and family satisfaction can improve with the correct PHI handling
Data breach regarding patient records is happening a lot; in fact, the number is increasing every year. This is forcing people to focus more on the staff who are directly involved in handling their data.
The Office for Civil Rights or OCR does an annual HIPAA audit every year. Each year, 25-30% of them gets triggered by patients’ or their family’s complaint. Patients will appreciate more for better handling of their data.
Training on HIPAA will reduce executive and organizational liability
Executives are responsible for any necessary training for the staff. If a data breach occurs, they will be personally responsible for not ensuring that the staff was properly trained. From the liability point of view, providing training will reduce their risk of losing the job or facing legal threats for any unexpected occurrence.
Is there any easy approach to HIPAA compliance training? Yes!
HIPAA Ready is here to serve you as the easiest solution to be HIPAA compliant. This is a modern, affordable, and effective platform that streamlines HIPAA compliance management and maintains a digital checklist of tasks, meetings, and training information.
Training on HIPAA compliance will never be easier after using the HIPAA Ready platform. It will help you to arrange a HIPAA compliance meeting, schedule training for staff, and assign trainees to their tasks. It can also provide notification to trainees regarding every step to training and other important information, and help them to complete the HIPAA training.
