What To Expect From A HIPAA Risk Assessment

Generally speaking, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, also known as HIPAA, mandates healthcare entities to carry out specific policies to ensure the confidentiality and privacy of protected health information of patients and other people. However, dealing with HIPAA rules and regulations can be challenging if the organization doesn’t know where to focus its efforts to become HIPAA compliant. This is where HIPAA risk assessment comes into play.

A HIPAA risk assessment is an audit process designed to evaluate your compliance status. It can assist an organization in better understanding the possibilities where patients' protected health information (PHI) may be vulnerable to illegal access and disclosure and determining how to address the issue. However, if you're new to the procedure, you must set your expectations to complete a HIPAA risk assessment successfully.

Keep reading this article to learn what to expect from a HIPAA risk assessment.

1. Familiarization Of The Different HIPAA Rules

When conducting a HIPAA risk assessment, you need to take into account the following rules associated with safeguarding PHI:

Privacy Rule

It involves the various ways it’s used to move and store protected health information within an organization and the identification of several methods by which you can disclose these pieces of data to unauthorized individuals. In short, your organization should probe into how specific processes are managed. These can include the rights to request privacy protection to PHI, access of individuals to PHI, uses of PHI, and other relevant procedures.

Security Rule

It involves setting up specific security standards necessary to safeguard electronic health information. Although this rule doesn’t provide specific guidelines on how entities should execute their security controls, they’re bound to consider certain factors to conducting a HIPPA risk analysis. These can include security measures, hardware, software, and technical infrastructure costs, and the impact of risks to electronic PHI.

However, if you think conducting a risk analysis under security rules can be best handled by professionals, work with a security company to get the job done right. For more information, you can browse through https://techumen.com/ and other similar platforms.

Breach Notification Rule

It involves notifying affected individuals, the government agency involved, and the media about the breach of protected health information. Generally, a breach refers to the unauthorized disclosure or use of processes that risk the privacy and security of health information.

2. Data Collection

Organizations are expected to gather information about the patients’ protected health information. Without accurate data, the HIPAA risk assessment is less likely to succeed. Hence, to ensure a smooth and successful process, you must prepare and collect all the information about PHI. You can do this by performing interviews, reviewing documentation, and taking inventory of the past and current security and privacy projects.

3. Identification Of Risks And Vulnerabilities

When conducting a HIPAA risk assessment, the risks and vulnerabilities must be identified. It’s an integral part of the procedure so the organization can figure out the level of risk they carry, their likelihood of happening, and, more importantly, their impact. Once these essential components are laid down, you can prepare for these risks and vulnerabilities by implementing security measures vital to attaining HIPAA compliance.

4. Development And Implementation Of Remediation Plans

Another thing to expect from a HIPAA risk analysis is that you need to develop and carry out remediation plans. These plans are designed to help your organization boost your security protocols to ensure protection against vulnerabilities, including cybersecurity attacks.

When creating the plans, keep the effectiveness of the protocols and the procedural requirements in mind to ensure everything runs smoothly. Once the remediation plans are finalized, prepare documentation of all findings for future reference.

5. Patience

Dealing with a HIPAA risk assessment is never easy. Despite the efforts to successfully conduct this procedure, there’s still no guarantee that organizations achieve 100% compliance, particularly on their first attempt.

That said, you need to be more patient when performing a risk assessment. For instance, you might need to develop a compliance plan repeatedly until you finalize the roadmap toward achieving 100% compliance with HIPAA.

Final Thoughts

HIPAA compliance requirements can be confusing and overwhelming. But with a risk assessment in place, you can prepare your organization for possible security risks and threats. However, like other procedures, a HIPAA risk assessment comes with some requirements.

Hence, it’s best to keep the information mentioned above in mind to know what to expect from the said procedure. The more you set your expectations, the higher your chances of conducting a successful assessment.

Jules Burns is a security researcher in a security company who has worked on several IT and cybersecurity projects. He shares his knowledge about these security matters by writing blogposts online. During his free time, he goes hiking with his family or friends.