A healthcare consultant compliant with HIPAA regulations can prevent a loss of Protected Health Information (PHI). PHI can imply more security for patient data, patient satisfaction, and a better reputation for your practice. Compliant healthcare consulting services help protect your hospital from lawsuits and civil or criminal penalties for HIPAA violations. Here is how medical practice consulting services achieve proper compliance:
Conducting Regular Audits and Tracking
A consultant regularly evaluates your medical practice’s billing records and other relevant documentation to check their reliability. Regular auditing and monitoring identifies errors in the stored patient health data or payment information. Healthcare consulting service providers analyze medical coding during auditing to prevent wrong procedure codes and other related errors that cause HIPAA breaches. A medical practice consultant audits revenue cycle management, automation, and patient collections. Proper auditing and monitoring by healthcare consultants can enhance your practice’s data quality and profitability. Integrity and quality of billing, reporting, or patient health data keep your medical practice HIPAA compliant.
Developing a Compliance Strategy
Before developing a compliance strategy, medical consulting firms research and understand various compliance regulations or policies. Standard HIPAA regulations for medical practice consulting services include breach notification and security regulations. Breach notification policies require healthcare consultants to alert clients about unprotected patient health information. Security policies involve assessing risks and measures put in place to safeguard ePHi. These rules enable a healthcare consultant to create comprehensive business associate agreements and other privacy strategies. The consultants can adopt a confidential system to allow employees to report HIPAA breaches more easily.
Handling Data
Patient data handling can revolve around data collection, protection, and sharing. Collecting patient data can allow your healthcare practice to research and find more effective treatments or care. Patient data can include information about a patient’s lifestyle, physical or mental health, genetics, treatment, and medical history. Some HIPAA-compliant practices your clinic can use to collect patient data and information include:
- Patient portals
- Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs)
- HIPAA Compliant forms
- Electronic Health Records (EHRs)
Your healthcare setup can protect the collected patient data by encrypting it. Encryption can prevent hackers and other unauthorized users from reading patient data even after accessing it. Different strategies to protect patient data include providing secure remote access, adopting scan audits, and authenticating users. HIPAA regulations require healthcare administrators to get the patient’s permission before sharing information with third parties like caregivers or family.
Training Employees
How a medical consulting firm achieves compliance can depend on the employee’s HIPAA compliance training level. Healthcare consultants should train employees about PHI disclosure regulations, patient rights, and compliance risk mitigation. Medical consultants adequately trained in HIPAA compliance can make your healthcare setting work structure more efficient. This can minimize time wastage and enhance performance and productivity in your practice. Well-trained consultants can identify and mitigate patient data security gaps like phishing attacks, lack of interoperability, or ransomware. The patients can trust your healthcare setup more and become more honest about their health concerns.
Researching the pricing terms of several external medical consultants can help you find an affordable option. Negotiate the deadlines, price, and other terms to prevent misunderstandings later. Defining your healthcare project’s scope can enable you to estimate its cost before outsourcing consulting services. Recommendations from other practices that have outsourced medical consulting can help you find a reputable service provider. Before hiring the consultant, ask them about HIPAA compliance, PHI violations, and medical billing. This can allow you to know if they can help your healthcare setting achieve patient satisfaction and growth.
Outsource Medical Practice Consulting Services
A medical consultant can prevent violating Protected Health Information and possible legal penalties. The consultants achieve compliance by handling data properly, training employees, and conducting regular audits. Outsource medical practice consulting services today to see the growth in your healthcare setup.