The Coalfire Blog

Is your HIPAA Security and HITECH audit program in order?

February 20, 2012, Andrew Hicks, Director, Healthcare Practice Lead

Healthcare organizations have been working towards HIPAA and HITECH compliance for a few years now. “Surprise” HIPAA compliance audits conducted by the OCR have begun and at Coalfire we’ve come across some gaps that have led organizations to fall short of their compliance initiatives.

Five Elements of an Effective HIPAA Audit Preparation Program
Through conducting healthcare compliance assessments for our clients, we noticed five elements that these healthcare organizations should have had in place as a cornerstone of their compliance program. Coalfire created a healthcare IT guidance perspective entitled, The 5 Elements of an Effective HIPAA Audit Preparation Program (PDF). This document, available today, covers the five elements that can help healthcare organizations with their compliance program.

Element 4: The Remediation Plan
One of the elements covered in the document is – The Remediation Plan. Simply put, organizations will have gaps – across a variety of areas addressed by HIPAA and HITECH. These gaps are critical to prioritize and identify as “addressable” in order to set plans in motion to mitigate the risks associated with those gaps. A more in-depth point of view on having a remediation plan in place is contained within the full perspective.

The 5 Elements of an Effective HIPAA Audit Preparation Program is available for download from Coalfire.  We are releasing these guidelines today to coincide the HIMSS12 show. Click here to download (PDF).

Would you be interested in speaking with Coalfire? Feel free to Contact Us or leave us a comment in the comments section below.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.