Compliance Software
Are you HIPAA compliant? Do you need compliance software? These are the questions anyone working in healthcare should be asking themselves. With data breaches and HIPAA audits on the rise, becoming HIPAA compliant not only protects you, but your patients and clients. The healthcare industry is the most targeted industry since an individual’s personal health information (PHI) can be worth a significant amount on the black market.
HIPAA compliance can be difficult to achieve on our own as the law is cumbersome and constantly changing. This is why we have developed a compliance software that takes away the guesswork. Implementing a compliance software allows an organization to focus on their business, while the software does most of the work for you.
What is HIPAA Compliance?
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) established standards in which organizations in healthcare must implement. The main purpose behind HIPAA law is to safeguard PHI. A covered entity (CE) or business associate (BA) dealing with PHI must have the proper safeguards in place in the form of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards. In addition, there are six self-audits that must be completed annually, you need to have proper policies and procedures in place to safeguard PHI, remediation plans to address gaps identified in your self-audits, employee training on how to handle PHI, and an organization must have business associate agreements (BAAs) with all of their vendors before the transmission of PHI can occur.
Lastly, in the event of a breach you must report the incident, if it is a meaningful breach (affecting more than 500 individuals) you must report the incident within 60 days to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the affected individuals, and the media. If it is a non-meaningful breach you have until the end of the calendar year to report the incident.
It’s not enough to be compliant, you must be able to prove your compliance through proper documentation. This includes proof that you conducted your annual audits, that you have written policies, procedures, and remediation plans in place, and that your employees have read and understood your policies and procedures, and that they are trained annually on HIPAA standards.
Why Do I Need to be HIPAA Compliant?
It’s the law, but if you need more motivation than that, HIPAA audits and fines are on the rise. An audit can be expensive especially when you factor in the costs associated with the damage to your reputation. The question is no longer ‘if’ you’ll be audited it’s ‘when.’ You cannot claim ignorance, you must satisfy all aspects of HIPAA law, otherwise you will be found negligent.
The Guard™ Compliance Software
At Compliancy Group, our goal is to simplify compliance so that you can confidently focus on your business. Our methodology Achieve, Illustrate, Maintain™, covers all aspects of HIPAA law. Our proprietary cloud-based compliance software, the Guard, has everything required by HIPAA regulation, built right into the platform. The Guard stores all of the documentation you need to prove your compliance in one convenient location, enabling you to track your progress.
Our Compliance Coaches® will guide you through our implementation process. Once you have completed our implementation process, you are eligible to receive our Seal of Compliance®, this is issued in three forms, a clickable seal that you can display on your website, when someone clicks, it will divert them back to our page where we will validate and verify that you have done all that is required to illustrate your compliance. You will also receive a seal that you can stick on your door and a seal to add to your email signature.
The Seal of Compliance is a great differentiator for your organization. Patients are increasingly educated, often researching doctors before making an appointment; studies prove that there is a 17% higher conversion rate on patient acquisition when you display the seal. The presence of the Seal of Compliance on your website will prove to prospective patients that you care about protecting their PHI.
In the event of an audit, our Audit Response team will handle everything, providing you with all documentation necessary to prove your “good faith effort” towards compliance, giving you the peace of mind to know that we have you covered.
