The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a federal act that ensures that all confidential information of patients is protected from misuse and abuse. There have been numerous instances when the protected information of patients has been misused for commercial purposes or otherwise and HIPAA will help in preventing such misuse.
There are various organizations of the health care industry which are classified as covered entities and they will need to follow all the rules and regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. These organizations can also do an audit to determine whether all the provisions of HIPAA are being followed without any intentional or unintentional violation.
Top 5 Steps For Conducting The HIPAA Audit
1. Before starting with the HIPAA audit it is important you gain adequate knowledge about the recent amendments and changes that have taken place in the Act. This will help you be up to date with all the latest provisions of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. You will be able to get all the information that is necessary for this purpose from the HIPAA website.
2. All covered entities will have policies and procedures in place that will help them comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This should be in accordance to the policies and procedures that have been stipulated by HIPAA.
3. The audit should check to see how all information pertaining to the patients are handled by the different departments of the covered entities. As all the information pertaining to the patient is stored on electronic devices (computers, hard drives) it is necessary to ensure that these are password protected. Apart from this all files that hold protected information of patients will also need to have passwords to gain access to them.
4. If the information is stored physically in files then the audit will check to see whether they are kept in a secure place. If any patient information is destroyed there should be adequate safeguards to ensure that it is done properly. All the physical files will need to be properly locked and access to this place should be restricted only to authorized individuals.
5. If there have been reports of any violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, it needs to be examined. You will also need to determine what steps were taken after detection of the violation. If the violation has not been cleared within the stipulated period of time it will attract fines and imprisonment depending on whether the violation was intentional or unintentional.
All these checks and counterchecks will help in keeping the protected information of patients safe and secure. It will also help the organizations who store and access this information to bring policies and procedures in place to check any kind of misuse. All the internal controls of the organizations need to be checked and suitable changes made to it to ensure compliance of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This will ensure that all protected information of the patients remain safe.
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