Conference Description:

This webinar will examine the updated HIPAA Audit Protocol as well as other questionnaires that have been used in the past and may be used to help prepare an organization for a future review. We will present methods for using the contents of the HIPAA Audit Protocol to build your own compliance plan by extracting the contents and relating your compliance activities and documentation directly to the questions that might be asked, thereby creating a compliance management tool to ensure continued compliance improvement.

We will review the contents of the HIPAA Audit Protocol used in 2016 to show what documentation needs to be on hand should your organization be selected for an audit or enforcement action. We will explain the enforcement regulations and the recent changes that increase fines and create new penalty levels, including new penalties for willful neglect of compliance that begin at $10,000. Documentation requirements for compliance will be explored and a framework of security policies necessary for compliance will be presented.

The results of prior HHS audits (and their penalties) will be discussed, including recent actions involving multi-million dollar fines and settlements. A plan for attaining compliance will be presented. The steps to follow to prepare for an audit and respond to an audit request will be outlined. In addition, upcoming trends in information security risks will be discussed so you can start to plan for the work you'll need to do to stay in compliance and keep patient information private and secure.