To be successfully in any business you need a few basic elements. Two of the elements include; customers that value your service and are willing to purchase your services. Secondly, you also need to eliminate or reduce liabilities that can damage or hurt your business.
Implementing HIPAA security can help your business
The first element of a successful business is having customers that value your services and are willing to purchase your services. If you are a healthcare organization then treating patients is your business. And if you do a good job, patients will purchase your services repeatedly. Not only will patients purchase your services but they will tell other patients who will purchase your services and you will see your business grow.
On the other hand, if you not good at treating patients then patients will find other healthcare organizations to purchase services from. Treating patients is a broad term but let’s look at it not only from a medical point of view. Sure treating a patient might mean diagnosing a disease, mending a wound, performing a surgery but treating a patient means how you actually “treat” them. How long does it take to get an appointment? How friendly is your staff towards the patients? Are your services reasonably priced?
And more and more patients want to know if their health records are being protected. Data breaches can be extremely costly to individuals and breaches of health related information can have even worse consequences. Look at the backlash to the Sony Playstation and Epsilon data breaches. Not protecting customer information can and will lead to a loss of customers. Loss of customers means a loss of revenue.
Implementing HIPAA security will help you put into place security measures that will protect patient information and lower the risk of having security breaches. Training your employees on how to protect patient information will help them understand what is required to protect information and familiarize them with security best practices. Avoiding data breaches will eliminate the associated damage to your organization and protect you from loss of revenue. Data breaches can have long-term damaging effects to an organization’s reputation that could potentially prevent prospective patients from purchasing services. Looked at another way, if you have taken protecting patient information seriously, you can even use it as a competitive advantage.
HIPAA security is like buying insurance
All covered entities (CE) are required to comply with HIPAA regulations. There are significant penalties for organizations that fail to comply with HIPAA. Organizations that are found to be in “willful neglect” of the HIPAA regulations face fines of $50,000 per occurrence up to $1.5 million in a calendar year. Stop to think about what these finds can do to an organization. HIPAA fines are usually not covered by an organization’s general liability insurance and a fine of $100,000, $300,000 or $1.5 million can devastate an organization.
Investing in HIPAA security and ensuring that you have policies and procedures, have performed the required risk assessment and have trained your employees shows that you have taken the HIPAA requirements seriously. It will make it almost impossible to say your organization is in “willful neglect” of the HIPAA regulations.
Just as you purchase general liability, malpractice and worker’s compensation insurance policies to protect your business, an investment in HIPAA security will protect your business against HIPAA fines. There are specific insurance policies, call HIPAA / Cyber insurance that provide coverage for HIPAA associated fines, and expenses related to data breaches. Some of the insurance policies require an organization to attest that they are compliant with HIPAA regulations; have implemented security best practices, etc. Combine HIPAA security with a HIPAA / Cyber insurance policy and you can significantly protect your business from damaging fines and data breach expenses.
Act today
HIPAA Secure Now! can help an organization implement HIPAA security and take steps to protect patient information. Avoiding data breaches can protect your revenue and your organization’s reputation. The HIPAA Secure Now! service will show that you have taken the HIPAA regulations seriously and avoid costly HIPAA fines. HIPAA Secure Now! is priced so that every organization can implement HIPAA security and protect their business. With increased HIPAA enforcement and a growing list of data breaches, the time to protect your business is now!
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