Preparing Contractors for HIPAA Compliance
Employers are responsible for contractors and temporary employee’s compliance with HIPAA. Here are two examples. You’re a small medical practice whose head nurse goes out on maternity leave and you hire your mother-in-law, an RN, as a temporary replacement until she...
November is Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Implementing cybersecurity policies is one of the most effective ways to protect your clients’ or employees’ PHI. Hackers frequently target databases containing sensitive health information because they can generate huge profits from the sale of ePHI. The information...
Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP) – Most People’s Connection to HIPAA
When you mention HIPAA, most people reference the Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP) they received at the hospital, doctor’s, dentist’s or eye doctor’s office. The NPP is a document that tells your patients, employees, or clients how their health information may be...
HIPAA Sanction Policies: What Employees and Employers Need to Know
When it comes to HIPAA law, the sanction policy is one of the most important factors employees must be aware of. HIPAA does not mandate exactly how employers must discipline their employees in the workplace. So, we provide our suggested guidelines for HIPAA sanction...
How to Ensure the Safety of Your Backups
We have witnessed an explosion of technological innovation since HIPAA was enacted in 1996. Most businesses swapped their filing cabinets for cloud computing systems years ago. This new method of storing data electronically certainly has its benefits; it’s easy to use...
Data Breach: 10 Ways to Prevent This Potential Nightmare
This month, we devoted multiple blog posts to covering major HIPAA violations and their penalties. Today’s post will explain the most common causes of breaches and the easiest ways to prevent them. Internal actors are more likely to cause a data breach than external...
Largest HIPAA Settlement to Date – Anthem Pays Millions After Cyber Attack
In the largest HIPAA settlement to date, Anthem Inc., a division of Blue Cross Blue Shield, will pay the Office of Civil Rights $16 million. This settlement is a response to the breach of almost 79 million people’s protected health information. Cyber attackers gained...
HIPAA and Cloud Computing
On October 7, 2016, HHS released a guidance on HIPAA and cloud computing.¹ As the use of cloud computing continues to grow, it is important for HIPAA covered entities and their Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) to understand how they can use cloud computing while still...