HIPAA compliance is an incredibly important part of working in the medical industry. Not only is it important to ensure that your staff is following HIPAA compliant procedures, but you will also need to ensure that the other businesses and contractors that you work with are HIPAA compliant too. For example, our call answering service at Care XM focuses on ensuring that all HIPAA guidelines are followed in order to protect your customers. Here are a few of the best tips for staying HIPAA compliant.

Have an IT Security Team

Whenever you work with sensitive information, it is extremely important to ensure that it is stored securely. In order to accomplish this, you will need to have a plan in place to handle any issues with your network security. You should have an IT security team readily available to quickly handle any breaches that occur in your network security.

Use the Right Call Answering Service

As previously mentioned, all of your external contractors will have to be following HIPAA compliant guidelines. When you use the services of a call answering company, you will have to ensure that they practice HIPAA compliance. By consulting with the right call answering service, you will be able to ensure that this isn’t a flaw in your HIPAA armor.

Staff Training

It is important to regularly train your staff regarding HIPAA standards. Regular refreshers can also help to ensure that they are aware of all of the guidelines that they need to be following. All staff has to be knowledgeable regarding HIPAA standards. In addition to this, you will often want to have various security clearance levels to limit access to sensitive information. This will aid in eliminating serious issues with the security of your information.

Secure All Paperwork

You should never leave paperwork with sensitive information around the office. This can allow other people to have access to this information, which is a clear violation of HIPAA standards. It is important to ensure that you keep paperwork stored securely in order to limit this amount of access to your important information. This will help to prevent this information from falling into the wrong hands.

Don’t Share Passwords

It is critical to ensure that you use strong passwords in order to protect this sensitive information. In addition to this, you will want to ensure that you train your staff to not share passwords. If this occurs, it can be difficult to detect a security breach, much less to prevent one. Prevent individuals from sharing passwords throughout the office. Also encourage them to not keep written records of their passwords.

Shred Files

Files that contain sensitive information should never be thrown in the garbage when you don’t need them anymore. It is important to ensure that you dispose of these files appropriately. Shred any files in order to destroy them and prevent other people from gaining access to this sensitive information.

Be Cautious in Conversations

You and your employees need to be careful with what you say aloud, especially when you have access to the sensitive information of your clients. For example, when discussing patients in the office, you should never use their full names when you are within other people’s hearing. It is important to be aware of what you are saying, so that you prevent accidentally providing access to sensitive medical information.

The team at Care XM is trained thoroughly in HIPAA guidelines, to ensure that all of these processes are followed. When you work with us, you can be confident that the information of your patients will be protected and secure. This is extremely important for anyone working in the medical industry. For more information about how to stay HIPAA compliant, contact us at Care XM today.