Adopting an email system complying with HIPAA regulations can help make your medical practice credible and trustworthy. Protecting sensitive patient health information (PHI) attracts more patients, builds their loyalty, and saves healthcare setups from legal problems. The success of a HIPAA compliant email for therapists starts with providing adequate HIPAA training to employees. Here are some strategies to help you train your healthcare staff on how to keep email communications HIPAA compliant:
Train Your Staff To Monitor Email Communications
Healthcare staff who consistently monitor email communications can quickly identify and mitigate various risks. Some common security threats to teach your employees about include spear phishing, spoofing, and malware. Regular email monitoring promotes secure communications with the patients and timely troubleshooting.
Tracking your medical practice’s emails also makes it easy to audit them. HIPAA email auditing can help you know anyone who accessed your patient’s health information and their reason for access. Regularly tracking and auditing your healthcare emails proves your accountability and dedication to keeping PHI safe. A HIPAA expert can teach your healthcare staff to monitor and audit email transmissions and create appropriate reports. Some forms of audits that promote a HIPAA compliant email for therapists include random, compliance, follow-up, and investigative audits.
Teach Your Staff Various Email Security Practices
HIPAA compliance training involves teaching staff how to assess and update your medical practice’s email security measures. One of the email security practices to train your healthcare employees on is encryption. This practice enables healthcare providers and patients to communicate without the risk of unauthorized individuals seeing their messages. Some forms of encryption to protect your healthcare emails include Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and Transport Layer Security (TLS).
Teaching your healthcare staff to create strong email passwords can also promote HIPAA compliance. Strong passwords for medical practice emails are long and combine numbers, letters, mixed caps locks, and special characters or symbols. Updating the passwords regularly and avoiding sharing them promotes data privacy. Other email security practices to teach your staff include two-factor authentication, creating web portals, backing up files, and updating antivirus software.
Plan the Training Process
HIPAA compliance training should start by sharing learning materials and resources with your healthcare staff. Workshops, presentations, and group discussions are engaging training methods to teach your employees about HIPAA regulations. Incorporate a training routine that fits your healthcare work environment and employees. Medical practice’s HIPAA training goals should be realistic and achievable by all the staff.
HIPAA compliance training should enlighten your staff about the steps to take when an accidental email security breach happens. Filing a complaint about a health information security breach and notifying patients can help promote adequate risk assessment. Risk assessment involves determining the affected patients, the type of violation, and the implemented mitigation methods.
Implement a HIPAA Compliant Email for Therapists
HIPAA compliant emails help secure confidential information like patient payment details, diagnosis information, and lab results. Train your healthcare staff to encrypt emails, track email communications, and report violations to keep your healthcare setup HIPAA compliant. Complying with HIPAA regulations can help attract more patients and increase your practice’s revenues. Contact a HIPAA compliance expert today for the best healthcare staff training.
