HIPAA Compliance for Dental Support Organizations
You probably know that as a dental support organization, you have to meet certain compliance obligations. HIPAA compliance for dental support organizations is not as straightforward as it may seem. What do you need to know to implement HIPAA compliance in your DSO?
What is DSO HIPAA Compliance?
HIPAA compliance for dental support organizations can be complicated. This is because HIPAA must be scaled for the type and size of the organization. Part of the nature of your business is that you continue to grow as you add more and more businesses under your business’ umbrella. This can make the already complex task of HIPAA compliance even more difficult.
Regardless, the same basic HIPAA principles apply to any healthcare organization.
Security Risk Assessments, Gap Identification, and Remediation
To be HIPAA compliant, it is crucial to identify where your deficiencies lie. To do so, healthcare organizations must conduct security risk assessments annually. These assessments uncover weaknesses and vulnerabilities in your security practices. To ensure that your organization meets HIPAA safeguard requirements, you must create remediation plans. Remediation plans list your identified deficiencies and how you plan to address them, including actions and a timeline.
HIPAA Policies and Procedures
To ensure that you meet HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification requirements, you must implement written policies and procedures. These policies and procedures must be customized for your practice’s specific needs, applying directly to how your business operates. To account for any changes in your business practices, you must review your policies and procedures annually and make amendments where appropriate.
HIPAA Training
HIPAA imposes employee training requirements. HIPAA training must be provided to each employee who has the potential to access PHI. HIPAA training must be provided annually, in which employees must legally attest that they understand and agree to adhere to the training material.
Business Associate Agreements
Business associate agreements must be signed with each of your business associate vendors. HIPAA defines a business associate as any entity that performs a service for your practice that gives them the potential to access PHI. Common examples of business associates include electronic health records platforms, email service providers, online appointment scheduling software, and cloud storage providers.
You cannot use any vendor and be HIPAA compliant. They need to be willing and able to sign a business associate agreement (BAA). A BAA is a legal contract that requires each signing party to be HIPAA compliant and be responsible for maintaining their compliance. When a vendor doesn’t sign a BAA, it cannot be used for business associate services.
Incident Management
To comply with the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule, you must have a system to detect, respond to, and report breaches. Employees must also have the means to report incidents anonymously and be aware of what to do if they suspect a breach has occurred.
How Compliancy Group Helps DSOs with HIPAA
Your compliance program must be scalable to accommodate your changing business needs. But with so much to juggle, how can you be sure that your HIPAA compliance is appropriately scaled for your business?
Work with a HIPAA compliance company that knows what they’re doing.
As ADSO’s preferred provider for HIPAA Compliance Solutions, Compliancy Group is focused on helping Dental Support Organizations simplify HIPAA compliance. Our software and Compliance Coach guidance automates HIPAA compliance in a simple, quick, and affordable way.
Our software makes it easy to manage multi-location organizations, allowing administrators to seamlessly switch back and forth between the many locations under your organization’s umbrella.
But what makes Compliancy Group an effective HIPAA solution for DSOs is the ability to add additional locations and users at any time.
“We had an email list of all the users from our Active Directory, but at that point in time, we were doing a lot of recruiting, so I ended up with some people registered in The Guard, and others not. I’m thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, this is going to be a nightmare. Every time a new person comes in, I’ve got to make sure that they get the same training as the existing people. Lo and behold, you guys have got that covered. If I register a new user, they will get assigned to them automatically, with all the information and training that everybody else has. Keeping tabs on the moving landscape and being able to make sure that everybody is assigned what they’re supposed to do–that is a big thing.” Clive Wilby, Compliance Officer, Alabama Cancer Centers.
