HCPro.com: Health Information Compliance Insider

Every issue of Health Information Compliance Insider is packed with ready-to-use information worth thousands of dollars to you and your organization, like advance warning from Washington on when to expect changes to and guidance on HIPAA regulations and compliance advice from leading health care lawyers.

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July 2008 (Volume 5, Issue 7)	view entire issue

HIPAA and the modern blended, extended family
Protecting patient information has always been challenging. But these days, it's downright maddening. The major obstacles remain the same. But now, healthcare facilities must also address the challenge of responding to requests for information from patients' blended families-a club that seems to add new members daily. Because more than half of marriages in the United States end in divorce, the lines that separate authorized and unauthorized disclosures are increasingly blurred.

Understand e-discovery and what it means for you
Facilities that don't know exactly where their PHI resides are less prepared to defend against civil lawsuits than they probably imagine. Several December 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which governs the civil litigation process in U.S. federal courts, require litigants to preserve and produce electronic information, so PHI management is becoming more complicated and more important than ever before. "This is a challenge for everyone," says Greg Freemyer, chief technical officer of The Norcross (GA) Group. "There is more to do and less time to do it."

Train your environmental services staff
Editor's note: The following article is the third of five in a series about effectively training specific groups of staff members on HIPAA privacy and security compliance. Just like your clinical staff, your environmental staff works inside your hospital 24 hours per day. Whether serving food, providing custodial or housekeeping services, or performing a variety of other tasks, environmental services staff members are part of the hospital fabric. They are just less visible than those wearing white coats. But that doesn't mean you should exclude them from HIPAA training. The nature of their jobs takes them to every nook and cranny of the hospital, and they have more access to PHI than you might imagine.

Other recently-published articles from Health Information Compliance Insider:

Protect your organization’s wallet: Comply with PCI DSS

Address data encryption in 2009

Physician offices: Tackle a different set of privacy training challenges

OCR complaints: Simple steps to smooth resolutions

BA agreements: Prevent problems and eliminate loopholes

2009 HIPAA forecast

Certified career boosters: How credentials help you

Ensure safe transfer of PHI when selling a practice

Honeypots: A sweet tool you can use to monitor snooping staff members

Discipline with the intent to educate when responding to HIPAA violations to minimize future incidents

Disaster preparedness: Design, update, and practice your disaster recovery and business continuity plans

Keep cell phone use compliant

Attention to detail, information exchange process makes Oregon DHS a compliance success story

Offshoring a potentially risky cost saver for organizations

HIPAA compliance in the ER

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