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Tackle privacy training challenges in physician offices; ensure compliance with HIPAA guidelines

Strategies for Health Care Compliance, March 1, 2009

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Strategies for Health Care Compliance.

Inside their physicians’ offices, patients can often get the personalized care they might find lacking in larger, less intimate hospital settings. First-name recognition, a deep-rooted understanding of the patient’s medical history, and familiar faces can put anyone at ease.

But experts say this unique environment poses privacy and security challenges that hospitals, with bigger budgets and better resources, do a better job of managing.

“I am not sure if attention is given to training, as it is in larger facilities with a structured training program,” says Peggy Presbyla, RHIA, CHP, a corporate trainer/privacy expert at Infotrak Records Management in Syracuse, NY.

Most states mandate annual training in hospitals and nursing homes on such topics as infection control, sexual harassment, and fire safety to keep their Medicare and Medicaid funding. “But physician offices are not subjected to these guidelines, so their training is reflected in this,” says Presbyla.

Like so many privacy hurdles, the solution is simple, but the application of the solution is not.

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Strategies for Health Care Compliance.

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