Not sure how to incorporate HIPAA training in your workplace?
Then use our guide below to get your employees on board with HIPAA Training today.
As you might already know, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, was created to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system.
Companies are now held to national standards for electronic health care transactions, code sets, health identifiers, and security. This protects you, your employees, and patients from any mistake or problem.
For a secure workplace, your employees must go through HIPAA training. The law requires this training to be conducted at least annually, but best practices recommend training be more frequent.
Each staff member must follow the HIPAA guidelines accordingly, as well as your business as a whole. You might already know how much work this entails.
This might not prove to be an easy feat depending on your unique company, but our tips below will ensure that your employees will learn everything that they need to in regard to HIPAA.
Workplace HIPAA Training
To ensure that your employees follow the HIPAA guidelines and prevent any mishaps with private patient information, follow these rules below for successful HIPAA training in the workplace.
Videos
The first trick in HIPAA training is to have your employees watch videos so that they can fully understand the point of the training.
Videos can open up their minds to the education and make sure that they know just how important this type of training is for your specific workplace. Video training can also work to:
1. Reduce Costs
Other types of HIPAA training may be time-consuming or cost money. Luckily, using videos can provide important training while also getting rid of potentially timely in-person training.
It also eliminates any costs needed for facilities. Your employees can access videos anywhere there is internet, making it easier to provide training.
2. Accommodate Different Learning Styles
This form of training can help all unique employees, especially the ones that learn best from visuals. Not all learn the same way, especially in the workplace.
It helps employees learn at their own pace with the ability to rewatch when needed, which is essential for important issues like HIPAA.
3. Keep Employees Engaged
At least 44% of all web videos are watched while at work, so use this fact to your advantage.
Videos engage and motivate your employees to learn, compared to other forms of teaching. Again, use this to your advantage. Help your employees feel mentored and relaxed as they take in this information.
4. Reduce Any Travel
Since videos can be played from anywhere, you don’t need to send your employees anywhere for HIPAA training.
This eliminates all travel costs and time away from the office for employees. It helps connect with experts easily, without the cost and time commitment of having trainers come on-site.
5. Provide Insight
You can gauge the reaction of employees, and ask questions after each video, to figure out who truly understands the information and who doesn’t. HIPAA education is thorough, and videos help you know who needs more training.
In HIPAA Security Suite, our videos conclude with a series of questions that require your staff to provide the correct answer. You can then manage all of your employees who have passed or failed from a simple dashboard.
Make sure that you show them compelling videos, so they know the true impact of HIPAA. There are free, high-quality HIPAA videos online to help you accomplish this first task of training if you need it as well.
Case Studies
You can also help your employees understand the importance of HIPAA training by providing them with case studies for them to learn from.
Examples of success and failure can teach your staff how to comply with HIPAA and what will happen if they don’t, which is essential to training.
There are plenty of online case studies to help employees understand various aspects of HIPAA, that can be organized by entities for:
- General Hospitals
- Health Care Providers
- Health Plans/HMOs
- Outpatient Facilities
- Pharmacies
- Private Practices
Case studies can also be organized by issues to help you narrow down your training, such as:
- Access
- Authorizations
- Business Associates
- Conditioning Compliance
- Confidential Communications
- Disclosures
- Impermissible Uses and Disclosures
- Minimum Necessary
- Notice
- Safeguards
Real-Life Scenarios
Like case studies, real-life scenarios can also greatly contribute to employee HIPAA training. They provide accurate situations that force employees to reflect on and act accordingly.
Make sure that you include these elements for successful real-life scenario lessons and that your employees master the overall training through:
- Engagement between employees and you
- Repetition of scenarios so employees never forget
- Connections between memory and real-life examples
- Acceptance by management
- Periods of reflection to help employees digest this information
You can use past HIPAA breaches from your company’s history, if you have any, to teach your employees how to act. You can explain scenarios that actually occurred, to leave a true impact on your staff.
Overall, real-life scenarios benefit your HIPAA training by:
- Helping to improve information retention
- Practice of real-life skills
- Cheaply training your employees
- Building skill patterns
- Filling in gaps in other training methods
- Creating a fun scenario for everyone
Communication training
Last but not least, you must make sure that there is proper communication during HIPAA training at your workplace.
Anything that is graphic can help teach your employees the importance of training, like:
- Posters
- Infographics
- Wallet Cards
- Tent Cards
Facilitate an open discussion, for employees to bounce ideas around and have them grow overall as a group. Success of HIPAA training means that every employee knows what rules exist and how they must act, so
The success of HIPAA training means that every employee knows what rules exist and how they must act, so make sure that you and your employees have open communication techniques in place.
Regular Security Reminders
The biggest mistake companies make with HIPAA training is the belief that putting their staff through periodic training sessions is sufficient.
While it may meet the minimum requirement for HIPAA compliance, it doesn’t meet HIPAA recommendations or best practices. We recommend regular reminders to make HIPAA security a part of your company culture.
You can sign up for the HIPAA Security Suite reminders and receive FREE weekly HIPAA security reminders for you and your staff.
Bottom Line
These tips will effectively teach your employees and have them understand the regulations that are key to HIPAA.
If you need further help, then contact us at HIPAA Security Suite. Our training program not only covers staff training, but also documentation, assessment, response, and other important HIPAA necessities.
So go on, take advantage of our easy training and our FREE weekly reminders. Your business will stay on top of the law and we’ll take the work out of it for your business.
Have you provided HIPAA training in your company workplace? What went well? What didn’t?