Home Health & Hospice Week

It's time to move HIPAA off the back burner. With new HIPAA audits on the horizon, you'd be wise to make sure your information privacy bases are covered now. The HHS Office for Civil Rights recently announced a pilot of 150 HIPAA audits (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XXI, No. 1, p. 4). OCR will complete the audits by December 2012. You can start to prepare by putting together your documentation of whatever steps you have taken to be compliant with HIPAA and HITECH requirements. "I've seen many organizations big and small lapse in their mitigation and monitoring response. Specifically that they do not review periodically," says information security expert Ester Horowitz. Organizations followed HIPAA initially from a system-wide approach, she adds. New procedures were adopted and others revised. Many of the procedures from that time continue today but some have become outdated or lax. Every organization is required to periodically [...]