You want to make sure that your dental practice avoids committing dental HIPAA violations. A violation could result in serious consequences, from fines to losing patients.
But if you want to avoid violations, you first have to understand what they are. Below are some common dental HIPAA violations and how to avoid them.
What Is HIPAA?
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — or HIPAA — protects patients’ health information. Overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, a human services office, it puts in place stipulations for:
- When and how to share health information
- Protecting patients’ confidential information
- Alerting patients when their information is compromised
- Penalties for HIPAA violations
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights has resolved countless cases and works diligently to protect patients’ rights1. If you're a healthcare professional of any sort, then you need to make sure you're following their guidelines.
As a dental professional, you have a responsibility to protect patients’ rights and information. Failure to do so can result in serious penalties and a breach of trust.
Common HIPAA Violations
Most offices work diligently to avoid dental HIPAA violations. That said, violations can still occur, even if unintentional. It’s important to stay vigilant and do what you can to avoid a problem.
Filming Patients Without Permission
Filming videos of your dental work may seem like an exciting new trend. You’d probably think that taking pictures or videos of people on the job can help inform others and boost social media engagement.
Filming patients, however, can be a HIPAA violation.
You need to make sure that your patients consent to filming. Without verbal and written consent, you’re violating their privacy — and can end up in serious trouble as a result.
Improperly Sharing Patient Health Information
HIPAA’s primary purpose is to protect people’s healthcare information. Naturally, sharing it improperly is a violation.
Sometimes, giving out health information incorrectly is a simple example of human error. For example, if someone sent healthcare information to the wrong patient, that’s a HIPAA violation, even if they did it accidentally. Other times, however, people may share the information intentionally — in response to negative reviews, for example.
It’s important not to share any healthcare information without consent. If a mistake happens, you need to take action to notify the patient accordingly.
Poor Security
Data leaks can happen. People may manage to hack into your system and steal data. While this can happen to even the best-prepared practices, having poor security can make a breach even more likely.
Improperly Disposing of Medical Records
You won’t always have patients for their entire lives. If you need to get rid of medical records, it’s important to do so properly. Otherwise, healthcare information could end up in the wrong hands.
Make sure you shred any paper records and that you completely wipe electronic ones. This way, you can avoid potential problems.
How Can Your Dental Practice Avoid HIPAA Violations?
So, what is the biggest way to avoid HIPAA violations?
There’s a simple answer: make sure you’re asking for patient consent anytime you might need to share healthcare information. In addition, you can take several other steps to protect yourself and your patients:
- Provide Employee Training: Employee error is a major cause of dental HIPAA violations. Sometimes, your staff just don’t know what to avoid. Providing thorough training — and offering refresher courses — can help mitigate this problem.
- Have Proper Security: You need to protect any virtual or paper documents containing confidential healthcare information. Make sure that you lock away any files, have solid virtual security systems in place, and that everyone knows the proper procedures for disposing of old medical records.
- Create a Corrective Action Plan: No matter how hard you try to avoid them, HIPAA violations may happen, anyway. As such, it’s a good idea to have a plan in place. Create a thorough plan outlining what to do if violations happen. Make sure your employees all understand this plan so you can take action when you need to.
Get Help with Your Practice
Dental HIPAA violations can cause huge problems. With the right procedures in place, however, you can potentially avoid them — or, at the very least, know how to proceed should they happen.
As the only end-to-end practice performance solution, Dental Intelligence can help you increase your production, number of visits and more. Schedule a demo today to learn more about what we have to offer.
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