Millions of Americans fall victim to HIPAA violations each year. With hundreds of security breaches reported annually, protecting your patients and practice from the consequences of dental HIPAA violations is crucial. 

Noncompliance can be challenging or even catastrophic for your practice. To avoid a lawsuit or a Corrective Action Plan for repeated offenses, it's imperative to understand these requirements for handling patient information.

What Are the HIPAA Requirements for Dental Offices?

HIPAA requirements protect your clients' private health information (PHI), streamline record-keeping, and keep your practice running smoothly and efficiently. Requiring dental offices to comply with set protocols ensures consistency in administrative functions across the industry and allows patients access to their medical records.

There are four primary tenets of the HIPAA standards:

1. Privacy Rule: This rule regulates who may access the patient's private health information.

2. Security Rule: Dental offices must be up-to-date and comply with current protocols and technology to secure patient information. 

3. Data Breach Notification Rule: Patients must receive notifications if their personal information has become insecure.

4. Omnibus Rule: This rule recommends using electronic health records for optimum security.

HIPAA compliance is essential to protecting your dental practice from liability issues.

3 Common HIPAA Violations and How to Avoid Them

Here are some helpful tips for managing the risk of common dental HIPAA violations:

1. Inappropriate Staff Access to Records

According to HIPAA guidelines, staff can only access patient records for medical reasons. Mistakes can and will occur even if your staff is diligent about protecting patient confidentiality. Improper staff access to medical records carries the potential risk of breaking all four HIPAA guidelines, but you can take several steps to mitigate this risk.

To avoid violations: 

• Train staff on when and how it is appropriate to access PHI.
• Establish document access controls to track staff access to patient records. You can reduce your risk of information breaches accidentally (or sometimes intentionally) caused by staff.
• Integrate your patient records system with a HIPAA-compliant server to save patient records securely.

2. Poor Security of Patient Records

Dental practices have lower security than other medical offices, so they're particularly vulnerable to data breaches and information leaks. Like the previous violation, this severe security issue is a potential violation of all four of the HIPAA requirements.

To avoid violations:

• Use strong passwords and two-factor authorization to log in to patient records. This step is crucial to avoiding data breaches like ransomware attacks or phishing. 
• Protect your patients and practice by ensuring that all devices lock with complex passwords and multi-login access. Having computer equipment and hardware that contains unsecured patient information that can become lost or stolen is a significant risk.
• Use medical-grade communication platforms to manage client information. Communicating patient data through unauthorized and unsecured devices or accounts is a major HIPAA violation.

3. Improper Disposal of Equipment or Documents Containing Records

This avoidable risk carries the potential to violate all four HIPAA guidelines. When a patient leaves your practice or your practice no longer needs the patient's PHI, HIPAA mandates that you securely destroy copies of the medical records. 

How to avoid violations:

• Before you dispose of a computer previously used to manage client records, hire an IT professional to scrub it free of private data.
• Shred all discarded paper documentation containing the PHI of patients.

• Review information disposal clauses in your contract if using a third-party service to dispose of information.

Respecting client confidentiality should be a top priority in any dental office. Dental Intelligence puts privacy and HIPAA compliance first. We offer tools to help you maintain compliance, like our template for dental treatment plans. Patients can view their treatment plan digitally, then sign and submit it—privately and securely. 

Your HIPAA Compliance Checklist

With these common violations in mind, use this checklist to evaluate your practice's current HIPAA compliance:

• Provide training to your staff on HIPAA requirements
• Develop official policies for HIPAA compliance in your office
• Encrypt patient data within your records system or when transferring information between physicians
• Use high-security, two-factor authorization to access patient information
• Instate a protocol for the disposal of old record-keeping equipment or documents

Top Tools for the Dentistry Business

Getting your dental office on track to HIPAA compliance can be easy. At Dental Intelligence, we provide digital solutions to help you meet and maintain standards and avoid dental HIPAA violations.

With free helpful tools for your practice, like our guide to dental treatment plans, you can streamline day-to-day operations to focus on what's most important: patient care.

Ready to grow your dental practice's efficiency, security, and success? Contact us now to schedule a demo and see how our Dental Intelligence digital solutions can help your practice.

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