Coming up with a good HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act) compliance program is difficult, confusing, and a heavy burden on anyone. The wording is legally complicated, vague, and strenuous to comprehend – and if you miss something that results in a mistake, you could land yourself in hot water. Therefore, more and more companies have decided to turn to HIPAA outsourcing, forging partnerships with organizations that already have the required knowledge and experience to stay on top of things. Following are five advantages of HIPAA outsourcing that will help keep your business compliant with healthcare regulations.
- Access To Expert HIPAA Consultation – The healthcare industry is made up of many types of organizations that specialize in different things – that is why HIPAA is worded in a way that can be difficult to understand as it attempts to provide relevant terms for all establishments across the board. Knowing what your business needs to do to remain compliant can be tricky depending on the kind of service you provide, but if you outsourced your HIPAA compliance to an expert then that means you would not have to worry about this at all. Consult your partner regarding any matters of regulation and policy easily, freeing yourself and your staff from countless hours of stressful research.
- Centralized Documentation – Staying in line with HIPAA deals with a lot of documentation, and as anyone that has tried to keep track of files knows, being the custodian of a chunk of documents that never stops growing is a thankless job. Save yourself the hassle by relying on a service provider that can help manage your files for you. This way, when an audit comes around, you will be ready to take on the challenge.
- Customized Policies and Procedures – HIPAA requires healthcare organizations to craft policies and procedures that are relevant to their respective businesses. To do this, one must be nothing short of an expert to make sure that there are no legal pitfalls or other nasty surprises. It will also take up a lot of time spent in research. Why burden yourself with this when you can delegate the entire process to your HIPAA compliance partner? This way you can be certain that your program is always updated and legally sound.
- No Need for Costly Staff Training – Training your own staff on HIPAA compliance may be the only thing worse than trying to learn it yourself. It takes a lot of time, effort, and money to organize employees at least once every year to sit and learn about your company’s compliance policies. When you partner up with a HIPAA expert, ask them if they can take control of your training process. If it is a service they provide, then that is just another thing that you will not have to worry about – leaving you free to focus on actual business or practice matters.
- Business Associate Management – Data security is one of the biggest threats to the healthcare industry, which makes sense when you realize just how much sensitive information is being transferred daily. This is why HIPAA requires any healthcare organization to have business associates sign an agreement to be responsible with any PHI (protected health information) that passes through their hands. Hand this off to your compliance partner so that they can assess the integrity of your entire network’s data security practices, take note of any inadequacies, then make sure your associates agree to improve on them by signing a document that legally binds them to do so.
When it comes to HIPAA compliant qualified medical evaluation (QME) reports in the state of California, TukkoMed is the key. Send us a message today and allow us to walk you through different options intended to make life easier for you.