As breaches continue to hit healthcare practices, it is essential to prepare your practice for a breach.
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Recently, a security breach at a popular cancer treatment center in Michigan put 22,000 patients’ records at risk.
Singh and Arora Oncology Hematology in Flint notified patients that files containing Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, CPT codes and insurance information were hacked over a period of seven months.
So, how do you prepare for a breach?
First, understand that it’s only a matter of time before your practice’s protected health information (PHI) is breached. The breach that occurred at Singh and Aroroa Oncology Hematology could happen anywhere.
Healthcare information continues to be highly valued on the black market due to its thorough nature.
Next, make sure your policies and procedures are up to date. Check that you are compliant with the privacy and security rule and the breach notification rule.
If you have a breach, noncompliance with any part of HIPAA will ensure detrimental fines.
Then, test and train.
Test your systems for any vulnerabilities. Work with IT professionals and legal counsel to make sure your risk assessment is tailored to your practice and protects your PHI.
Then train your employees on breach readiness. Your employees need to know exactly how to act when a breach is detected.
We help to train our clients so that there is no delay in their response to a breach.
In our next blog post, we will keep you informed of related issues. To get this important information delivered directly to your mail box, Click here to Subscribe
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P.S. If you or your patients are interested in consumer healthcare issues, check out myhealthspin.com.
