Many practices are victims to insider snooping. Unauthorized access by employees into patient records is a big deal, with harsh consequences.
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Insider snooping leads to costly compliance issues and loss of patient trust.
Is it possible to stop or prevent employee snooping?
While there is always a risk of unauthorized access, you can implement initiatives to make sure it doesn’t happen at your practice. The best way to prevent employees inappropriately looking at Protected Health Information (PHI) is to take proactive measures, such as:
- Training your employees,
- Establishing appropriate policies and procedures,
- Tapping into information technology for audits, and
- Maintaining your prevention efforts.
Training should include appointing a privacy officer. The privacy officer should present to all new employees about the importance of patient privacy. New employees should also be taught about their responsibilities and expectations regarding patient privacy.
We help our clients train their employees and their privacy officers to prevent unauthorized access of patient records, and we help to educate them about the consequences of internal snooping.
It is also important to create a workplace culture that embraces privacy and security. One way to reinforce this, is to have periodic reminders sent out by your practice’s privacy and security officers.
Follow-through, by way of frequent internal audits, is also a great way to prevent employees from looking at patient records.
Unauthorized access into patient medical records is a serious offense, and should be treated like one.
Prevention of internal snooping requires constant efforts on the part of privacy and security officers, and a serious investment by your practice.
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Do you need help with your preventing unauthorized access of patient records or appointing privacy and security officers? We can help. To contact us about training your employees, appointing privacy and security officers, your HIPAA risk assessments, or your other legal needs: CLICK HERE.
P.S. If you or your patients are interested in consumer healthcare issues, check out myhealthspin.com.
