In a special Halloween episode of The Healthcare Compliance Pod, attorney Susan Freed advises how to avoid hocus-pocus and security risks to prevent haunting compliance nightmares.
In healthcare, compliance issues can quickly escalate into compliance nightmares, with serious implications for patient safety, legal liability, and an organization’s reputation. Among the most common compliance nightmares today are cyberattacks and in particular ransomware attacks. Recently, the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights released an educational video for healthcare providers with information on the latest ransomware attacks and how to avoid them. Healthcare providers of all sizes should check out the video here.
Another tool that can help you avoid a cybersecurity nightmare, is a comprehensive security risk assessment. HIPAA-covered entities are required by the HIPAA security rule to conduct a security risk assessment to ensure they’re adequately protecting protected health information and to determine where protected health information may be at risk. If you don’t have a security risk assessment or aren’t sure if your security risk assessment is adequate, check out the free security risk assessment tool published by the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT here.
On our podcast this week, we discuss these tips and more on a special spooky Halloween episode of the podcast.
