Conducting a HIPAA Risk Assessment

Unfortunately, healthcare data breaches are nothing new and are quite common. In fact, you can view the extensive list of facilities (many in California) that have been breached on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website. Breaches are not only financially expensive to your practice, they also can do great and lasting damage to its reputation. AOAExcel offers member doctors an exclusive solution to this threat.

“Where do I start?”

• This is where doing a HIPAA risk assessment comes in. Are you a covered entity? A business associate? Or a hybrid? The first step is to determine what your status is under the rule. Visit the National Institutes of Health website to learn the difference between these categories and which applies to you. 
• When do you do your assessments? Well, according to HHS, it should be done regularly. While that’s not extremely clear, one IT company recommends at least annually or when there is a significant change in your business environment.

There’s Help – A Member Benefit

To help keep AOA-COA members protected, AOAExcel has partnered with Compliancy Group who helps doctors of optometry achieve, illustrate, and maintain total HIPAA compliance with the confidence to face the auditors head-on. Since these regulations and protocols are continuing to evolve, Compliancy Group also keeps optometrists fully informed about updates to federal regulation and trends in enforcement through their ongoing education series.

"Their service allows me to feel confident that I have navigated the minefield of Federal HIPPA regulations, including the more recent HiTech and Omnibus rules, and sit in a defensible position in the event of a HIPPA audit or similar challenge," said COA President Dr. Stevin Minie.  "I was provided a personal coach who worked with me by phone over the course of several weeks as we built a unique online manual of privacy and security policies."

Compliancy Group’s web-based HIPAA compliance solution, The Guard, is built to track the status of your compliance. That means that whenever a policy, procedure, or employee training is in need of review, The Guard will remind you with accompanying instructions telling you how to proceed. Your own expert compliance coach will then guide you through implementation to make sure that you're fulfilling exactly what's required of you under the law.

As a member-benefit, AOA-COA members receive three months free when signing up for The Guard.