The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA of 1996 was brought into effect by the United States Congress and President Bill Clinton. It was mainly intended to prevent health care system scams. It was also designed to make health care delivery easier through electronic medium.

With HIPAA compliance becoming mandatory for all healthcare organizations, a checklist has been formed to keep a check on the organizations. The HIPAA checklist has guidelines for the organizations to ensure that they are following the HIPAA rules. This includes processes such as emergency operations, contingency plans, access to patient records, and response to violations etc. Other information that must be included in the checklist is related to the software used, hardware configuration information, security during transmission, and audit control. It is recommended that the healthcare organization appoint a person who can be in-charge of the checklist and ensure that HIPAA compliance is met.

Listed below are five major requirements of the HIPAA checklist.

– Defined set of duties: If you want to ensure strict HIPAA compliance then this step is very important. The checklist needs to include details of the employees allowed to access patient records. There also needs to be defined limit for the access of patient data. Most frauds in the healthcare system in the past have occurred due to patient information access by unauthorized persons.

– Defined set of procedures: There may be rare cases when a patient’s records need to be altered due to the patient’s request or other authorized reasons. The HIPAA checklist needs a defined procedure and policy to deal with such situations.

– Defined procedure for incidents: In case of any occasion of privacy or security issues the checklist needs to include defined procedures. All such incidents should be recorded in written so that they can be tracked to prevent further incidents. Repeated privacy and security issues that fail to be dealt with can result in the healthcare organization losing their HIPAA certification.

– Defined recovery plan: The organization needs to be prepared for disaster. Hence, the HIPAA checklist needs to include a proper recovery plan to enable the work to continue. This back up plan needs to be tested repeatedly to ensure it is properly working. The checklist should also include repeated upgrading of the hardware and software used by the healthcare organization.

– Security software installation: If you really want to comply with HIPAA standards you need install the security software. Violation to any system may lead to unauthorized access of the patient records. Network protections like cloud based firewall will prevent any breach in the software. The HIPAA checklist must include regular checks to ensure all electronic data is safe. As the main aim of HIPAA is to maintain safety and privacy of sensitive patient information, it is essential that proper safeguards be in place.

The officer in-charge of controlling HIPAA compliance is responsible for the implementation of the checklist. His main work function is to make sure that the healthcare organization is strictly following all HIPAA rules and guidelines.

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Keywords: HIPAA,Health Insurance ,health information,medical data,HIPAA security rule