5 Main Types of HIPAA Training
By Greg GarnerThe Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enforced as a federal law in 1996. Medical organizations are required to be compliant with the laws of this act. To help these organizations achieve compliance, certain HIPAA compliance training courses have been formed. The HIPAA laws mainly deal with patient data privacy and security, and govern the operations of health care organizations like hospitals, clinical, and other medical facilities.
In a broad classification, HIPAA training can be of two main types, namely, Professional HIPAA Training and General HIPAA Training.
However, these two types can be broken down and we have five main sub-typesor basic types of HIPAA training. These five types are mentioned below.
• Professional training focuses on specific roles of medical professionals. For e.g. doctors and nurses are the front line care-givers and have special access to patient information at all times. Other employees like administrators and medical clerks also handle patient records that contain sensitive information. This type of training deals with the specific objectives of these medical professionals as they strive to comply with HIPAA laws in an individual manner.
• When a general training session about HIPAA is given to an organization by a training company to enable the organization be HIPAA compliant, it is known as general training. This training is given to all the employees of the healthcare organization, including laundry and housekeeping staff, and employees from other departments, even those who do not directly deal with patient health records. Training is also given to individuals who are involved in modifying or bringing changes in the organization in order to meet HIPAA requirements.
• There is another type of training that focuses on the actual patient records that contains confidential patient information. This compliance training teaches the organization to maintain the medical records of patients, starting with record creation to storage and maintenance. The training is crucial for over-all compliance and includes training about lock and key storage of paper records, digital records storage, server security, and so on.
• Legal training is another type of compliance training that deals with rules in the event of a healthcare organization caught for compliance violations. Employees in lead positions in the hospital, like human resource personnel, legal staff, and others who deal with legal issues of the organization may need to undergo this training. Legal HIPAA training has a specific syllabus which deals with how to prevent legal issues and in case of violations, how to respond to them.
• There are other kinds of HIPAA training that vary based on the delivery of training. Some companies may offer classroom based training, while others may offer online training courses. Online trainings include webinars and can be undertaken in the comfort of a person's own home. HIPAA training may also vary depending on course syllabus, duration of course, certification, and other similar factors.
All these training courses are different in their approach, but eventually have one single goal. They aim at training employees and staff to perform their specific functions and comply with the HIPAA rules and regulations.
For more information, please visit our HIPAA Training website.
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