What Healthcare Compliance Tools Does Your Organization Need?
There are many different types of healthcare compliance tools. These tools help healthcare organizations to comply with specific laws and regulations. For example, all healthcare organizations doing business in the United States have to comply with HIPAA, OSHA, and PCI. Companies operating in other countries have to comply with similar laws such as PIPEDA, PHIPA, and GDPR.
Which healthcare compliance laws does your organization need to comply with? How can you be sure that you are meeting these laws’ requirements?
Using Healthcare Compliance Tools to Simplify Compliance
Using healthcare compliance tools, especially software solutions, streamlines the process of compliance. When you use one healthcare compliance tool to meet all of your compliance needs, you can ensure that you don’t miss a step.
Security Risk Assessment and Remediation Tool
Security risk assessments (SRAs) are a vital part of HIPAA compliance. This is because an SRA aims to identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities in security practices. As a result, healthcare organizations can better prepare against potential threats. Once SRAs have been conducted, it is crucial to create remediation plans to address any identified deficiencies.
Using an SRA tool eases the process of doing so. This tool reduces the time and work it takes to assess an organization’s security posture through yes or no questions. With the answers to these questions completed, the tool can then automatically create remediation plans to close compliance gaps.
Employee Training Tool
To ensure that your organization complies with HIPAA standards, all employees that have the potential to access PHI must be trained. Employee training must be completed annually and include HIPAA basics, your organization’s policies and procedures, cybersecurity best practices, and the proper use of social media.
It is not enough to conduct a once-a-year company training program. All new hires must be trained promptly. As such, it can be challenging to track which employees need to be trained and when. An employee training tool allows employees to complete training online at their own pace. Employee training attestations are also stored in the employee training tool. When it is time for employees to meet their annual training obligations, they are notified by the software platform.
Business Associate Agreement Tool
As business associates create, receive, transmit, store, or maintain protected health information (PHI) on behalf of their healthcare clients, they must be HIPAA compliant. It is a healthcare organization’s responsibility to ensure that its business associates are compliant. This is accomplished through vendor questionnaires and business associate agreements (BAAs).
Using a business associate agreement tool, healthcare organizations can easily send out vendor questionnaires and BAAs. These completed documents can then be sent back through the tool and stored in the vendor’s profile for easy access.
Incident Management Tool
Should you experience a breach of PHI, you must report the breach to affected patients, the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights, and in some cases, the media. It is essential that employees can report suspected incidents anonymously.
Employees can submit incidents anonymously while allowing administrators to track the incident by using an incident management tool. Some incident management tools also provide users with breach and audit support.
OSHA Healthcare Compliance Tool
There are a few significant areas of OSHA healthcare compliance that healthcare organizations must be concerned with. These include General Safety, Bloodborne Pathogens, Personal Protective Equipment, and Hazard Communication. Depending on what kind of healthcare organization your business is, you’ll have to meet other specific standards such as the Dental Office Safety and X-ray Standards.
An OSHA healthcare compliance tool provides the documentation and training material required to meet these standards.
Compliancy Group Healthcare Compliance Tool
Compliancy Group is your all-in-one healthcare compliance tool.
Compliancy Group’s automated software solution allows healthcare organizations to meet HIPAA and OSHA compliance standards. The Guard software solution includes security risk assessment, employee training, business associate agreements, incident management, breach and audit support, and more. Keep an eye out for PCI, PIPEDA, CMMC, and SOC 2.
