• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Privacy officers' salaries vary widely; responsibilities still unclear

HIPAA Weekly Advisor, June 28, 2002

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to HIPAA Weekly Advisor!

Privacy officials' salaries range from as low as $30,000 to as high as $124,500, and most privacy officials have other responsibilities and job titles in addition to that position, according to a recent survey of a sample of BOH readers. Survey results show the average salary for these acute-care hospital privacy officials is $68,400.

"Most hospitals don't know what to do with the privacy officer's salary yet," says Holly Ballam, privacy officer and physician liaison at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. "A lot of people have inherited the position without a pay raise. That should change when people realize how big a job it is."

"The privacy official's job is a demanding one that requires a lot of expertise at balancing a lot of different functions," says Rebecca Williams, Esq., RN, counsel and co-chair of the HIPAA group at Davis, Wright, Tremaine, LLP, in Seattle, and chair of the preemption sub-workgroup for the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI). "They deserve every penny."

Privacy and much more
Privacy officials take on a variety of other roles, according to the survey results. Of the 58 privacy officials we surveyed, 81% are also either the health information management director or the compliance officer.

"One of the hard parts about HIPAA compliance is that [the privacy officials] are adding to their responsibilities," says Williams. "HIPAA-compliance is the overtime stuff."

Nearly three-quarters also oversee privacy activities at a satellite facility, such as a clinic or physician office.

Go to http://www.himinfo.com/news/feature.cfm?content_id=22413 to read more.

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to HIPAA Weekly Advisor!

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive