Sunday, February 20, 2011

Pursuing The Right Lead Towards Healthcare Compliance

Intense competition and unscrupulous attempts have done a lot of damage to the credibility of the healthcare industry. With rampant reports of misplaced patient records and unethical access to confidential data, measures have been enforced to deal vehemently with compromising situations. Despite the enactment of the HIPAA laws hospitals and medical facilities are facing challenges to preserve the confidential records of their patients. This is because the healthcare organizations fail to implement an approach that can administer the processes and workforce in a comprehensive and cohesive manner.

In 2010 Rite Aid, the pharmacy chain was fined $1 million for violation of HIPAA. A recent statistics revealed that from Dec 18, 2010 to Jan 17, 2011, 16 data breaches were reported by OCR (Office for Civil Rights) which affected more than 500 patients and the number of events totaled up to 225. Regardless of the fact that these medical organizations endeavor to implement the best solutions for security purposes they fall prey because of the inability to keep up with the revised regulations due to faulty policy frameworks.

The organizations also have a persistent problem of adjusting their budgets according to the varying demands for a more secure and recent compliance healthcare framework. The HITECH and HIPAA complianceregulations have kept the organizations on their toes as they have to be prepared for any unforeseen incidents. This requires proactive planning and implementation of robust solutions to combat any unexpected security breaches.

Compliance entails meticulous maintenance of records management, continuous monitoring of the compliance status, scheduling audits, optimum management and control of data and extremely efficient analytical and reporting capabilities. All these virtues are present in the automated HITECH compliance management solution delivered through a cloud-based service. The solution provides some extraordinary capabilities such as automatic update of the policies as per the revised regulations, a regular update on the compliance status, identification of the HIPAA/HITECH requirements and remediation measures.

Business Associates have been identified as one of the prominent links for security breaches. Thus the web-based program has been designed to adhere to all hitech compliance regulations meant for business associates. The solutions provided are on the cloud which means there is no additional cost for new infrastructure which is a respite for the organizations reeling under tremendous financial pressures. The fear of bearing agonizing penalties is over for the healthcare industry. With the web-based IT security compliance program security issues and risk management can be handled effectively in a cost-efficient manner providing relief to the healthcare sector.

Know More on: Hipaa compliance.

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