HHS plans surprise HIPAA audits

This is very big news for the Healthcare industry. It would be severely detrimental to the reputation of an organization if they were to appear on the HHS site.

Taking a proactive approach now will help to ensure that organizations won't be in a reactive panic if the external auditors come knocking later.

The F1000 companies in the Health and Life Sciences industry that we work with utilize the following as a best practice approach:

1. Centralize and standardize your organization's policies.

2. Map your policies and control standards to the authoritative sources that govern your business such as HIPAA.

3. Promote and communicate policy awareness across your enterprise to relevant employees.

4. Assess, report and demonstrate compliance with your policies and industry regulations before the regulators make their appearance.

Hopefully by staying ahead of the game, your reader's organizations will avoid showing up on the HHS web site.

Grant Hinkle
Archer Technologies
www.archer-tech.com

The forfeit on the rights of the patient and the rights of the hospital staff sounds like a drastic need for in the job training.

If there are 20,000 cases and 11,000 are divulged and grapevined out in the public.

1. the employees do not understand the law and ethics in the work place.

2. there is a revolt with a certain ethnic group and the group is feeling devaluedd

3. The hospital is hiring immigrant workers, whose visa's have expired.

There could be a smorgasborg of reasons why, however, qualitycontrol is expected to be ontop of issues of this nature. Unless, not all inappropriate acts are being written up. This will in turm prove statistically a problem, but the problem itself will not be evident.

For instance, all locks are to be locked on hospital beds. There is a place on the nursing progess notes, which the disignated staff is required to post and investigate the locks being secure on the patients bed.

Suppose you are employed on an orthpaedic floor. Patients are normally required to ambulate right after the surgery. This is not to up grade nor downgrade, but suppose each month there is at least 8 slip and falls stemming all from orthopaedic patients. However, the cause which is the brakes were not on the bed, but the box was checked.

You have the statistical proof, the incident report, and the patients understanding of the fall, but no one has thought of the beds being unlocked.