Home Health & Hospice Week

Do your HIPAA P&Ps reflect your practices from years long past? Establishing HIPAA protocols isn't a one-time job. Make sure your privacy and security practices are up-to-date to account for new information management applications and systems or state laws, or you could come up short under audit, warns attorney Kenneth Rashbaum of Rashbaum Associates in New York. "Privacy rules essentially demand that we remain vigilant, thus it forces us to always evolve, reach for a standard of excellence, and improve with time," says information security expert Ester Horowitz. HIPAA Audits Announced The HITECH Act requires the Department of Health and Human Services "to provide for periodic audits to ensure covered entities and business associates are complying with the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules and Breach Notification standards," HHS says in a release. To implement the mandate, the HHS Office for Civil Rights, which is in charge of HIPAA enforcement, "is [...]