Were you aware that HIPAA requires companies in the healthcare industry to do several things to operate legally?
The HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a statute that outlines how companies in the medical field should operate. Unfortunately, many companies have medical compliance issues that result in them getting shut down or fined.
When running a business of any kind, meeting compliance will help you avoid trouble and gain customers. To help those in healthcare, we’ll go over the main things you can do to make meeting compliance as simple as possible.
Here’s how to meet medical compliance in 4 steps!
1. Ensure Doctors and Patients Have Privacy
When it comes to meeting compliance in the medical field, one of the main things you must focus on is privacy. Patient info must be protected at all times and should only be accessed by authorized individuals. To ensure this happens, you must have private rooms that allow doctors to treat patients without anyone else near.
You must also lock patient info behind password-protected accounts. Doctors and nurses that work directly with a patient should be the only ones that can view the info.
2. Inform Everyone of Your Privacy Policy
When following the HIPAA privacy act, you must inform your team of your privacy policy. This will prevent anyone from doing something they shouldn’t, ensuring you don’t have compliance issues.
You can send an e-mail to your team and/or host a meeting to discuss it. If anyone has questions about the policy, ensure they have a clear understanding of it. Remind them that everyone will have different permissions depending on their roles.
3. Enforce Policies and Procedures
After informing your team of the privacy act, the next thing you should do is enforce it. While having private rooms and password-protected info can help, employees may still end up doing something they shouldn’t. When this happens, you must ensure it doesn’t happen again.
You can enforce policies by implementing consequences whenever someone doesn’t follow the rules. For example, if a team member doesn’t comply with the HIPAA privacy act, you can fire them or have them go through the training process again.
4. Train Your Team
One of the best ways to avoid compliance issues is to train your team as effectively as possible. This includes ensuring they know about your policies and how to perform their duties.
When onboarding employees, you should outline several things they must know before they can take up a position. For example, a training nurse must know how to communicate with patients, work with doctors, and record patient info.
Using something like MedPro Systems®, you’ll have an easier time meeting compliance because you can look up info whenever needed. Reference this info when putting together a training program.
Start Meeting Medical Compliance Now
After reading this article, you now know how to meet medical compliance in just a few steps. We encourage anyone that works in the medical field to start going through these steps if they’d like to avoid long-term compliance issues.
To learn more about the healthcare industry, check out our other articles!