What Does the HIPAA Security Risk Assessment Procedure Involve?

HIPAA Security Risk Assessment

With the HIPAA regulations in place, they encourage patients to share more information and safeguard their private information by maintaining and preserving electronic health records. Such requirements create a significant burden on healthcare organisations despite improving the quality and effectiveness of healthcare systems. The prime reason for it is failing to comply with HIPAA regulations can result in substantial financial penalties.

A crucial element in ensuring HIPAA compliance is the risk assessment, for inadequate or incorrect risk assessments will result in data breaches and security flaws or weaknesses. Most institutions find performing risk assessments difficult owing to the unavailability of sufficient internal IT personnel and resources.

Learn About HIPAA Risk Assessment and Its Importance

An institution dealing with patients' data by creating, obtaining, transmitting, or holding digitally or electronically protected health information (ePHI) should guarantee its protection by taking necessary security precautions. Assessing ePHI security threats and putting procedures in place to assure HIPAA Security Regulations compliance are important among them.

An analysis of the security risks to the institution's ePHI that could lead to Privacy Rule violations is known as a HIPAA security risk assessment. Comprehensive guidelines for complying with a number of regulations, some of which are required and others of which are addressed, are provided in a HIPAA risk assessment. 

How to Do a HIPAA Security Risk Assessment?

You are allowed to use any approach that complies with the rules while doing a HIPAA risk assessment. What you have to do is listed below.

• Adapt the risk assessment to your business needs

HIPAA risk evaluations can be tailored to an institution’s requirements based on:

o The nature, size, capabilities, and complexity of the system, including its IT infrastructure, network system, and security capabilities. 

o The importance and feasibility of potential security concerns, and the expenses for running security measures.

• Scope determination

As with any project, determining the scope is one of the first tasks in a risk assessment. No matter how or where ePHI is produced, acquired, managed, or moved, you have to regard it.

• Gather data

To obtain information on your use of ePHI at this level, you have to review every piece of documentation for all previous and ongoing projects. You have to establish: What kind of ePHI is accessible to your company? How you could access the data? Who has access to it? How is the ePHI maintained?

• Examine security precautions 

You should assess your current security precautions. You can start by keeping a record of all the security measures put in place to take care of ePHI.

• Identify vulnerabilities

With the knowledge you have already gathered, you should be able to identify any security system weaknesses.

• Ascertain safety precautions

You need to create a list of corrective measures you have to take to reduce the risks to a reasonable level after assigning the risk levels.

• Record the results

You should explicitly explain the PHI with which you work, the risks and weaknesses, and how you propose to weaken the uncovered threats for the security and probity of ePHI in all of your findings.

With a HIPAA security risk assessment that complies with HIPAA rules, you can protect ePHI.