Working in healthcare can be so stressful and intense as it is. Due diligence like tackling HIPAA compliance can feel burdensome and impossible, as it takes away from precious hours and resources.
It appears this way because most practice managers and healthcare professionals view compliance as a burdensome hassle. They view it as a determent from the patient, and view it negatively in large part due to all the work involved to ensure that their technology and processes meet set standards as to avoid violations.
So, how can practice manager, doctors, and other healthcare professionals lessen the negative experience and impact of HIPAA compliance requirements?
HIPAA Compliance: The Audits Are Coming.
HIPAA audits are imminent. It is no longer a matter of if, it’s when.
In the spirit of education, knowing about HIPAA is not enough. As a practice manager, you need to constantly be assessing and auditing your network, your systems, and your data to maintain that compliance once it is achieved.
You need to foster a culture around mitigating risks and security gaps. In order to maintain compliance, you’ve got to have a documented process for monitoring, maintenance, patching, and encryption. You should be aware of how all of this affects all aspects of your environment, and how to craft a security policy around things like devices, data access, and recovery planning.
Why is knowing not enough?
Whether you’re a practice manager, doctor, or administrator, your awareness of HIPAA requirements and how they’re measured have to rank at the top of your priority list ahead of your audits or any cyber attack.
The technology inside your business is now driven by applications. Your clinical operations and staff who operate those systems and applications need process and management. A competent, knowledgeable managed services provider (MSP) or IT staff can carry a great deal of that weight for you.
Having the support of an MSP means that your workforce is more efficient than ever before and you are able to stay focused on running your practice.
With the underlying goal of HIPAA protecting PII, MSP’s seek to share your grave responsibility to ensure that your healthcare practice is safeguarded from present and future threats and protecting patients’ information as a result.
Solving struggles for healthcare professionals.
We’ve found, in our experience working with healthcare providers, that practice managers are relieved when they recognize the uniquely well-rounded approach MSP’s take to supporting them. They want to know that their compliance, under HIPAA, is accounted for, but in that they’re able to take worry and a whole host of tasks off their plate when it comes to other aspects of practice management: Vendor management support, hosting services, proactive monitoring of their systems as a whole, and so on.
Leverage your MSP for ongoing compliance support
Healthcare professionals like yourself need an outsourced IT relationship they can trust. Multiple healthcare organizations trust Cooperative Systems to manage their technology environments and see that they achieve compliance and maintain it thereafter.