Meaningful Use and HIPAA – The Risk Analysis

Guest Poster: John Brewer is the founder of HIPAAaudit.com.  He and his team help physicians run HIPAA Compliant practices in the simplest, most pain free way.

So far we’ve covered Information System Activity Review & Sanction Policy.

The next item to tackle for the HIPAA side of Meaningful Use is the Risk Analysis.  This may also be referred to by some as the Risk Assessment also.

The Risk Analysis is simply a look at the way your practice operates as it pertains to PHI and your computer network.

Your risk analysis shouldn’t be a handful of questions.  It should be a set of targeted questions – partly to see that your practice is doing things correctly and partly to invoke conversation to ensure you fix other areas of how your practice does business.

The risk analysis we use is just north of 100 questions…and it continually grows as technology changes and new phishing scams arrive on the scene.

How often should a risk analysis be accomplished?

Once a year is reasonable for most practices.  An additional risk analysis should be accomplished anytime there is a major technological or physical change.

A technological change would include: a new EHR, a new component to your EHR new computer network architecture, and even something as innocent as a new photocopier (more on this later).

Physical change would include any remodeling that might change the layout to the waiting area or a complete location change for the office.

Can I accomplish the risk analysis?

Sure, you or your staff may accomplish the risk analysis.  Be aware though, the risk analysis can become quite technical, so you may need to have your IT staff involved, at least in part of this analysis.

But don’t be fooled, this risk analysis is not just technology based.  Your risk analysis should cover areas including:

  • Does the practice have a privacy window at the sign in station?
  • Does the practice close the privacy window to the lobby except when speaking to a patient directly?
  • Does the practice use an acceptable procedure to hide patient names on the sign-in form?
    • What is acceptable?  Here are a few examples:
      • Individual sign-in slips that are handed to the receptionist
      • Peel-off name labels that are removed by the receptionist and stuck to the file (yes, even in the electronic world paper still exists)
      • An electronic sign-in system – this is a fancy way of saying a computer in the lobby on which the patient signs in.
  • Who has keys to the office?
  • Where is the list of who has keys to the office?
  • Who has the alarm code to the office?
  • Where is the list of who has the alarm code?
  • Is the door from the waiting area always locked?
  • Does the facility have a sprinkler fire system?
  • Does the server have a fire system sprinkler above it?
  • Are all computers at least 3 inches off the ground?

Now we’ve hit 3 of the 4 HIPAA items in the required Risk Analysis in the Meaningful Use Core Objectives.

Next time we’ll at least start on Risk Management.

 

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

1 Comment

  • I found your articles on the Risk Analysis for Stage 1 Criteria extremely helpful. Will you addressing the final component – Risk Management – any time soon?

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories