Home Health & Hospice Week

Be sure you aren’t committing these common HIPAA sins.

Watch out for these HIPAA compliance pitfalls cited by attorney Rebecca Williams with law firm Davis Wright Tremaine. The first is a particular risk for home health and hospice agencies due to their visiting staff.

• Lost or stolen portable media that was not encrypted, particularly thefts of laptops left in unattended vehicles;
• Disposal of protected health information, such as leaving PHI in dumpsters or on the hard drives of printers and scanners;
• Incomplete or absent risk analyses;
• Hacking and malware;
• Accessibility of PHI through Internet services; and
• Failure of covered entities to have business associate agreements in place.