The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires all hospitals, medical practices, and healthcare organizations to follow federal guidelines to safeguard protected health information (PHI). Therefore, it is a federal requirement to report any violation of HIPAA. Doing so requires submitting a HIPAA incident report, a critical task that ensures prompt handling of information and security breaches and improves patient safeguarding.
What Are HIPAA Incidents, and Which Ones Need Reporting?
A HIPAA incident is any behavior or inaction violating a HIPAA rule. Compliance officers, executives, and other leaders should be knowledgeable of the various types of HIPAA incidents:
- Cybersecurity breaches like hacking of networks and systems
- Unauthorized access to patient records by staff
- Failing to provide patients access to their PHI
- Unauthorized disclosure of patients’ PHI
- Failure to terminate access to PHI when no longer needed
- Improper disposal of medical records
- Loss or theft of devices containing PHI
- Disclosure of PHI without proper consent
- Lack of or insufficient safeguards of the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of PHI, including failing to encrypt
- Improper or insufficient employee training on HIPAA regulations
- Failure to conduct regular risk assessments
HIPAA security incident reporting requirements are in place for important reasons. For one thing, they enable organizations to improve patient safety by correcting errors and preventing future incidents. The creation of the report also provides the compliance officer with documentation that can serve as legal protection in the event of an audit or investigation.
Filing a HIPAA Privacy Incident Report
HIPAA security incident reporting requirements mandate that the compliance officer file a report after discovering a security breach. Furthermore, a proper HIPAA breach incident report form contains the following elements:
- Basic information: Date, time, and location of the incident and complete names of the involved individuals.
- Incident description: Detailed explanation of the nature of the incident, the steps leading to its occurrence, and what actions any involved persons took after it happened.
- Witness statements: Witness names and contact information, detailed descriptions of their observations.
- Incident assessment: Description of the root cause(s) and contributing elements, as well as evidence for this conclusion.
- Corrective actions: Steps the organization has or will take to address the breach and its contributing factors, identification of measures to prevent future incidents of this nature.
Compliance Software and the HIPAA Privacy Incident Report
Even when you know the requirements for a proper HIPAA incident report, getting started or feeling confident about submitting a compliance report can be challenging. That’s why having support from an established service provider can help your organization prevent HIPAA incidents and respond to them when they occur.
Compliancy Group offers HIPAA compliance software that keeps you updated on regulations and provides guidance on crafting organizational policies and procedures. This includes staff training to help your organization maintain compliance.
When facing a HIPAA violation, you can rely on our software for an easy template that helps you submit the correct HIPAA breach incident report form. Our software will simplify and manage all reporting steps, which include creating anonymous accounts for taking incident information, filing an accurate and timely HIPAA incident report, engaging in the appropriate follow-ups, and conducting thorough risk assessments and mitigations.
