It may be your own employees.
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In February of 2017, over half of the health data breaches were caused by insiders.
Insider wrong-doing can be a result of disgruntled employees or just human error. When working with protected health information (PHI) regularly, it is easy for employees to forget the importance of confidentiality and privacy.
It’s also easy for employees to become careless with the physical safeguards of PHI.
How do you prevent a breach caused by employee wrongdoing?
Train your employees regularly on the importance of protecting PHI.
Make sure that employees know not to access PHI that they do not have a reason to access, as required by their job. They may not access PHI of friends or family.
Also train employees on physical safeguards and make sure to do spot checks to make sure they are following through. Employees should not have passwords in plain sight, and must log out of work stations when not at their desk.
If employees are able to take laptops or USB drives containing PHI home with them, technical safeguards must be in place.
Encryption is essential to protect PHI. If employees can access PHI outside of work, make sure that they are trained to report all devices to the HIPAA officers so that your practice’s inventory is up to date.
We help our clients train their employees and keep their inventory and risk assessment current.
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P.S. If you or your patients are interested in consumer healthcare issues, check out myhealthspin.com.