TIP: Educate patients on HIPAA rights
HIPAA Weekly Advisor, March 23, 2009
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You can change your organization’s stance regarding patient education by bringing staff members on board with a plan and being creative with ideas that are relatively painless for them to embrace.
Rebecca Herold, CISSP, CIPP, CISM, CISA, FLMI, a privacy, security, and compliance consultant with Rebecca Herold & Associates LLC in Van Meter, IA, suggests the following examples:
- Put a sign on the admissions desk saying something similar to, “Do you know your privacy rights? Ask us and we’ll tell you!” Make sure you have plenty of copies of the notice of privacy practices available to give to patients.
- Put posters on the reception area wall and in the patient care area hallways, listing the actions your organization is taking to safeguard and protect PHI, such as:
We Care About Your Privacy And Safeguard Your Personal Information! We do this by:- Making sure no one has access to your personal information except those who need it to perform their jobs;
- Following best practice security and privacy practices;
- Complying with privacy laws such as HIPAA. “If you have a question about how we protect your information, please ask!
- Hang posters in patient care areas reminding staff members of privacy practices.
- Include blurbs about information security and privacy in the healthcare statements you send to patients.
- Put magazines about privacy and security in waiting rooms.
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the upcoming May 2009 issue of the HCPro, Inc. newsletter, Health Information Compliance Insider.
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