The Health Care industry is highly regulated with strict HIPAA requirements safeguarding the sensitivity and confidentiality of patients. When patient confidentiality is breached, sometimes its due to hacking, but mostly because of internal staff and 3^rd party contractors acting out of ignorance or malicious intent. When a patient’s medical confidentiality has been violated “It’s like feeling your clothes have been ripped off in the middle of work.”  “That’s what it feels like. You feel so exposed.” as described by Joseph Fenity, a confidentiality breach victim. Also, a breach of personal identity can cause years of headaches as patients try to cope with credit and financial complications. Even worse, there may be instances where his/her medical information may be altered which can be detrimental to their health. Imagine if an imposter uses information for medical visits that changes the blood type or other medical conditions on a patient’s charts. This has life threatening consequences. The safety and security of your patients’ records are critical to his/her overall well-being.

Medical data breaches can lead to large monetary and criminal penalties for your company and all parties involved; 

Also, you face the risk of lawsuits and loss of professional reputation, ultimately jeopardizing your business.

You are also held liable for EVERY party that breaches data security and laws on your property. You already follow all of the necessary hiring and training procedures for your on-site staff, but what about your third party contractors, especially IT field technicians? IT technicians are involved with installing, updating and maintaining your security systems, data programs, drug inventory portable machines, wireless access points, cabling, telecom, equipment and much more. Field technicians not only have access to all the data at your office, clinic, nursing home, or hospital; but they are entering in a very private environment where the care and privacy of your patients are critically important.  Do you know if they had an extensive background check? Do you know if they fully comprehend HIPAA laws? Do you know if they have been immunized?  Do you know how professional they are and if they will blend into the environment? Working with a TRUSTED third party contractor that ensures all the above standards are met are extremely important in addition to making sure your on-site staff is repeatedly educated on HIPAA and the severity of any violations committed.  Surprisingly, statistically, this is not the case. Continued education of staff and working with trusted field technician company’s needs to be stringently upheld, especially since the highest HIPAA privacy violations types are from data physically stolen on the premises. See the pie chart from HIPAA with the violation statistics.

How do you ensure the security of your hospital, medical/dental clinic or medical practice? Ensure you are working with an IT Services company that guarantees background checks of all staff, immunizations, and professionalism. Use a service that is available 24/7 365 days of the year and can arrive on-site same day. 

If you would like more information on providing the best methods for IT services and rollouts in your medical/dental/vision/senior living/home health/dental/hospital or any medically related field that requires adherence to HIPAA laws, then join Tech Service Today’s live webinar on Wednesday March 30^th, 2016. You can sign up here to register:

LIVE WEBINAR INFORMATION CLICK HERE

“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”

– Stephen Covey, American self-help author 

Patients put their trust in their health care providers in every regard. Do everything you can to ensure that trust, because if that trust is broken, it is next to impossible to gain it back.

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