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HIPAA Compliance Risk Analysis

1369 Words6 Pages

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a vital part of the health care industry’s day to day business. HIPAAs procedures define how healthcare companies receive and handle their clients’ health care information. HIPAA helps to protect the patient’s personal information through confidentiality and security procedures while being transferred, handled or shared with other healthcare providers (Modifications to the HIPAA Privacy, Security, Enforcement, and Breach Notification Rules, 2013). When a patient’s privacy is not regulated, third parties could buy and sell the information without the patients’ authorization. With HIPAA being in place, it prevents healthcare employees from divulging any patient information they …show more content…

Healthcare providers can assist in their HIPAA compliance by doing a protected health information inventory (PHI), having a security evaluation, conducting a risk analysis, creating a mitigation plan and an incident response plan (McNickle, 2012). Having a PHI inventory is a logical starting point which identifies the information assets that the company requires securing whether the information is electronic or on paper. Even though HIPAA only requires healthcare companies to cover electronic PHI, this process will how the company will collect, store, share, or dispose of the patient information. Having this inventory in place will also reveal any risks within the current system in place, exposing where a breach could occur. Implementing a security evaluation over the company’s security policies and procedures can be used to pinpoint any holes in the security system between the current protection and what is required by HIPAA. The policies and procedures should reflect any environmental changes as well as operational for an accurate analysis of the …show more content…

is a privately run home healthcare agency. Our company is operating in several locations in ten states, to date with over 40 agencies. We take confidentiality very seriously throughout all the departments of the company, making sure that the staff is aware of the policies and procedures that are put in place for assurance of our patients’ privacy. As I stated in my previous homework assignment, there are several departments within AngMar that handle different aspects of the healthcare process having the possibility of seeing patient information and there are compliance procedures set in place that are mandated by the company and the state in order to prevent any employees from sharing anyone’s private information. We work closely with Medicare and Medicaid in order to serve our patients, who are usually under a physician’s plan of care and need skilled nurses to assist them in their home (About Us, n.d.). One of the major concerns in our industry is preventing health care fraud. In the past AngMar has dealt with healthcare fraud from dealing with new acquisitions as well as with patients’ doctors accepting kickbacks. The patients and the healthcare providers are notified beforehand if there are any out of pocket expenses, according to HIPAA compliance. AngMar lets all employees know coming in that they will periodically do checks on the end users’ systems to make sure that they are not doing anything that will infect the

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HIPAA expressly allows a covered entity, such as the Hospital, to disclose PHI for the purpose of obtaining reimbursement for the provision of health care without need of the patient’s authorization. Accordingly, we recommend that a letter be sent to Mr. Craven explaining why his complaint has no basis in law or fact. The goal of this letter will be to discourage him from making a frivolous complaint to the government. I.

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In order to ensure their protection HIPAA has instituted the Privacy and Security Rules that pertain to the safeguard of the Administrative, Physical, and Technical aspect to a patients EHRs. This insures that your provider puts into place measurements that guard against any unauthorized use of a patients PHI. Administrative Safeguards: HIPAA requires providers to have policies and procedures that are in place that protect the patients security, privacy and confidentiality. The administrative safeguards required under the HIPAA Security Rule include: • Identifying

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You are correct Vaschar, the HIPAA privacy rule does play a big part in the role of keeping patient information secure. In the instance when a patients information is given to a fellow medical provider for continuity of care to establish a consult appointment is not an issue, but should that patients medical records need to be released between the medical provider and the other provider of care a medical records release authorization should be signed by either the patient or the patients representative. In the case where a medical provider wishes to distribute a product for another company it can do so without any HIPAA violation just as long as it does not pass on any patient demographic or patient care information to the company. If

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1795 Words | 8 Pages

The walls in the office of healthcare providers are made sound proof by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA). Sound proof meaning that each patient’s healthcare information can only be shared between the provider and the patient; their information is required to remain confidential by law. In 1996, HIPPA was passed by congress; the act included regulations that would help to protect patient privacy and health information (Petersen, 2001). After reading the novel, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot one may be appalled and think that what occurs in the novel is a complete violation of HIPPA. But, the time frame needs to be taken into consideration.

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The purpose of the HIPAA transactions and code set standards is to simplify the processes and decrease the costs associated with payment for health care services. The transactions and code set standards apply to patient-identifiable health information transmitted electronically. Physician practices will continue to be able to submit paper claims. When the regulations take effect in October 2002, standard formats and code sets will take the place of any payer-specific or location-specific formats or requirements. ICD-9-CM Volume 1 and 2: Diagnosis Coding - ICD-9-CM is used to code and classify morbidity data from the inpatient and outpatient records, physician offices, and most National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) surveys.

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Since HIPAA become mandatory on most of the health care organization, patient information is more secure compared to previous. Health care organization are investing huge amount of fund for safety measures to protect the patient information and i think this is the main concern in today's advanced health care

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368 Words | 2 Pages

HIPAA Summary In 2009, the Congress created an act called Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It is designed when people became concern about his or her personal information being stolen. With the media growing every day, it has become easier for people to hack into computer take identities and putting others at risk. The federal government made HIPAA way to reduce company’s downfalls and financial crisis due to theft.

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The first article was a summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In the article, there was an introduction on what HIPAA meant and its importance. First off, HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and it is a disclosure of patient information so that it is protected from unknown individuals and to assure that health providers abide by the privacy rule. Some key facts about HIPAA were, who was covered, what information is protected, and administrative requirements. Noncompliance and criminal penalties were some of the critical issues found in the article.

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The importance of HIPAA compliance in medical transcription lies in the fact that it ensures confidentiality of patient information in accordance with law. The HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) Privacy Rule, approved by the U.S. Congress in 1996, establishes identifiable policies for the exposure and utilization of an individual patient's health details. HIPAA stipulates non-disclosure of protected health information (PHI) without the patient's permission, for healthcare requirements, national interests and public benefits. It also seriously investigates compliance associated problems. Why HIPAA Medical Transcription Services are Important Medical Ethics and Appropriate Treatment - The first reason is that medical

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739 Words | 3 Pages

Every organization is at risk for breach, but the difference between entities will be reflected in how they implement policies, procedures and corrective actions. For example, changes to the HIPAA rules regarding the accounting of health information disclosures expected this year have the potential to dramatically expand HIM and release of information (ROI) responsibilities and pose operational challenges. Every step within the release of information should be addressed through training, with these particular areas: front desk personnel, document identification and the pre-shipment validation. Finally, just prior to submission to the requester, release of information staff should always validate that only the uniquely authorized information has been included an that the information imported into the release of information process for disclosure belongs exclusively to that patient. If this is the case, the the release of information staff must implement and perform quality control measures to validate that another patient's information was not inadvertently imaged or indexed to the original patient's

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The goals of HIPAA are to ensure medical coverage scope for workers and their families when they change or lose their employments and to secure wellbeing information trustworthiness, classification, and accessibility. The objectives are also to enhance our health care framework by making it more proficient, less difficult, and less

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1406 Words | 6 Pages

There will be patients that dislike the EHR and prefer the old fashion paper system as they believe that to be a safest way to store information. Ethical and social implications of Electronic Health records are not limited to, hacking, provider ’s neglect of loosing laptops with patient confidential information, leaving other patient records up while a different patient is in the room. Insufficient training for staff as many staff may not be properly trained in implementing HIPPA which compromises patient’s privacy. Over worked staff may input wrong information in the EHR such as inaccurate spelling and recording of patients’ name and current medication history.

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Unfortunately HIPAA violations happen every year in our country. In fact, a situation happened in a New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center on May 7th 2010. The HIPAA violation happened after the electronic health records of 6,800 patients ended up on Google for the world to see. The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who are responsible for HIPAA enforcement laws deeply investigated this case. It was discovered that a Columbia University physician who developed applications for New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University, attempted to deactivate a personally owned computer server on the network containing electronic protected health information (ePHI).

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This interoperability weave is crucial in facilitating communication across provider organizations involved in patient care through secure and reliable information exchange. • RECs provide support for privacy and security of health information. Ensuring privacy and security is vital in building trust in order to realize the potential benefits of health information exchange. If there are perceived or actual risks in the accuracy and completeness of health information, individual’s willingness to disclose necessary health information may be tampered with. • Assistance in workflow redesign and analysis • Training in EHR: selection, implementation, support, project management and financial consultation.

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HIPAA Violation rocks hospital! An employee at St. Charles Health system accessed over 2400 patients’ medical records over a two-year period because they were curious. We all know that curiosity killed the cat and now it may have direr consequences for this curiosity seeker and the hospital system. HIPAA Violation without intent to commit fraud The employee who viewed the protected health information (PHI) without a legitimate reason to do so is in jeopardy of large civil fines, loss of their respective clinical license and criminal prosecution.

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