A Comprehensive Guide To HIPAA Audit For Medical Practices

If you are a healthcare services provider or running a healthcare practice, the least you want in the morning is an email from the Office of Civil Rights (OCR). Are you unaware of OCR? Let us clarify what OCR is and its core goal.

OCR is responsible for ensuring that medical practices or business associates in the US comply with HIPAA to protect sensitive patient medical information. It is due to an increasing number of healthcare data breaches.

To ensure HIPAA compliance, they select several healthcare organizations for a HIPAA audit to check whether they follow the privacy and security rules. If you deal with healthcare data and are not HIPAA-compliant, you will be in big trouble if, for some reason, OCR selects you.

Startups and enterprises need not panic, as we are here to help you know everything about the HIPAA compliance audit and how you can prepare your organization for it to avoid any penalties.

What is a HIPAA audit?

A HIPAA compliance audit is a way of checking how covered entities and business associates handle and secure protected health information. The goal is to evaluate whether these organizations are following the HIPAA best practices to secure patient information or not.

Many of you might be wondering what things are considered in this audit. To clear you all, during this audit, a comprehensive review of policies, procedures, employee training, and other security measures is carried out to ensure everything is in place to prevent data breaches.

This HIPAA audit is conducted every year by the US Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to resolve healthcare data security challenges.

When can the OCR audit you, and Why?

The OCR can conduct a HIPAA audit of your medical practice at any time. There is no fixed schedule. That’s why it’s important to always stay ready for a sudden audit. As for why the OCR might call for a HIPAA IT audit, the usual reasons are a data breach report or a complaint. Let’s take some examples of the reasons that can trigger HIPAA compliance audits.

• A patient can file a complaint against you if you mishandle sensitive information or expose it to unauthorized individuals.
• According to HIPAA, all breaches should be reported to the OCR. So, it is highly likely that a data breach report can also be the root cause for initiating an audit. However, it is pivotal to know that the audit is conducted depending on various factors, including the extent and nature of the breach.
• Your own employees might file a complaint. Even though it appears unlikely, you never know what personal motives they might have. Alternatively, they might consider it their ethical responsibility.

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