Is HIPAA really that big of a deal? Is it really something that we all have to do? I hate to tell you,…
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Hi everybody. I am Julie McLaughlin here for Fearless Acupuncturists with the American Acupuncture Council, and today we’re gonna be talking about a HIPAA Risk Score Assessment. So a little quiz that we’re going to do together and we’re gonna make sure that you are HIPAA compliant. So I have a few slides to share with you, so let’s go there now.
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So again, we are from the Fearless Acupuncturist with the American Council of Acupuncture, and I’d like to thank them for allowing us to talk to you today and sponsoring these wonderful programs. It really helps educate all of our fellow providers in the things that we do. They are wonderful, and we wouldn’t be here today without them.
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So what’s the risk with him? Is HIPAA really that big of a deal? Is it really something that we all have to do? I hate to tell you, but it’s right. So what we’re gonna do today is we’re gonna find out if you’re actually protected. Or if you’re accidentally a HIPAA hot mess, which nobody wants to be a HIPAA hot mess, let’s face it.
And we’re gonna take this little risk score, and don’t worry, no one’s going to know but you, this is only to see where you are, where your starting point is. You might be a hundred percent good, or you might need some help. So don’t sweat it. It’s going to be easy. And we’re going to take this one step at a time.
So some of you probably have seen my partner, Dr. Perry Barnhill, doing some of these speaking engagements here. But you also may have seen me, um, in some other venues talking about chiropractic even. And I’m an acupuncturist as well, like you and functional medicine practitioner. So I’m doing this today and I’ve kind of switched gears after practicing for 37 years.
Into helping some of my friends because frankly what I started seeing and what scares me more than, you know, seeing things that people come in with, ailments they’re coming in with in our office is that some of my friends, brilliant providers. Are losing everything. They’re having huge issues, not because of bad care, not because of failing in practice, not because of any of that stuff, but because they had compliance gaps that they didn’t even know existed.
And that really fired me up and that’s why I teamed up with Dr. Perry. He is the smartest. Compliance Ninja. I know he is the go-to guy when it comes to this stuff and I’ve actually been working with him for a very long time. Kind of in the background. I kinda do the tech stuff and, but today I wanted to talk to you about the hip risk score because it is so important to me that my friends.
Okay, we wanna go from acupuncture to audit. No, we don’t. We don’t wanna do that. We just wanna do acupuncture. Who wants to do audits? Nobody wants to do audits. You went to school to help people. When you opened your practice, it was like a big surprise. You became a CEO, IT director, a privacy officer, a cybersecurity manager, you know, running the front desk.
And somehow you still have to be a human being, but at the end of the day, you just want to treat your patients. You just wanna get your patients better. But we don’t wanna have audits. We don’t wanna have these things. And I realize that providers need support. They don’t need fear, they don’t need to worry about things.
But when compliance fails, patients suffer and the provider pays for it. And we don’t want that to happen to our friends. So that’s why we made this HIPAA compliance risk score. And the truth is that hipaa. Isn’t about paperwork, it’s about protecting people. I know there’s a ton of paperwork and no one wants to do it and we don’t get paid for it, but if we don’t do it, we could be paying somebody else and we don’t wanna have to be paying fines to the government or, you know, losing everything like we’ve seen so.
Let’s just check where you are now and make sure that you are good. So I want you to send me a thumbs up if you are a hundred percent comp compliant. If you’re a hundred percent confident that you are HIPAA compliant, you are not 99%, but you’re a hundred percent thumbs up. Nah, not very many thumbs up, right?
Because who could say that they’re a hundred percent on this stuff? There’s so many gray areas, I gotta tell you. We research this all the time. This is what we do, is looking at the changes and the laws, you know, and one law comes up and we’re like, okay, now you gotta do this. And then the next thing you know, there’s a lawsuit in the government and then they change it.
Well, nope, we decided you don’t need to do that now you gotta do this. And it. Hard to keep up and it’s not fun to keep up ’cause we wanna keep up with things in our field and acupuncture and what’s going on and what’s the latest treatment. And you know, the case studies, we don’t wanna be doing this stuff and I get it because I’m right there with you.
But at the end of the day, the government doesn’t care. They don’t care if you don’t know. Right, because ignorance isn’t a protection. It’s just like our taxes. Like they don’t care if you say, well, I didn’t know I couldn’t do that. They don’t care because you’re. Responsible for knowing you’re responsible for knowing your risk.
So that’s step number one. So that’s why I want you to do this HIPAA risk score Quiz with me. It’s fast, it’s gonna take you a couple minutes. It’s totally anonymous. Zero judgment. You’re the only one that’s gonna see this score, but it’s going to give you a starting place of where you should be with your hipaa.
So I want you to get your phones out right now and I want you to go on the QR code and take this quiz. If you can’t do it because you’re driving in your car or you’re seeing patients and you’re listening to this in your earbuds or something like that, I want you to write this down. HIPAA risk score.com.
Now don’t HIPAA mistake number one, don’t misspelled HIPAA, H-I-P-A-A risk score.com. Go there, it’s gonna take you a couple minutes and I want you to go through the questions. And just be honest because it’s only for your own feedback to give you where you are. Are you A, B, C, D, F? Right. We all wanna be an A, but you have to have a starting point.
Where are we going to be? Right? So what’s on the quiz? It’s super easy. There’s privacy training. It’s gonna ask you about your cybersecurity and encryption, your business associates compliance, breach readiness policy, and document updates, and the changes that have been made this year in hipaa. That’s a really big deal.
Now, if you are like, oh my gosh, I already know, I don’t know this stuff. Take the quiz because it will teach you a little bit about these things by, by taking the questions and knowing what you know and what you don’t know, so then you know what you need to work on. Right? Super, super easy. So when our patients come in, they don’t know what’s wrong with them.
That’s why they come to us, right? We help them find out, and then we give ’em a solution, a treatment that’s gonna help them. That’s all this is. It’s gonna help you find out where your starting point is, what you need to do, and then from there you’re going to be able to know where to go. What are the steps you need to correct?
Make sure you’re compliant, right? Super easy. So here’s an example question. So. When you hire someone new into your practice, when do they get their privacy rule training? Is it on their first day that they start, they show up and they get their privacy rule training? Or do you say, we teach on the, on the job.
They learn as they go. So think about it, when do give that privacy training to your new hires? Now, if you say, I’m teaching as I go, or we do it once a month with the whole team. You might wanna rethink it because think about this, when do they have access to PHI? When do they see that people’s names who are coming into your office?
When do they see the 18 different types of PHI personal health information that could get breached? And they didn’t even know that they had to keep it confidential. So you wanna do little things like this is make sure that if you have a new hire that you’re. Teaching them that privacy rule right from the get go, they are gonna be HIPAA compliant for you.
’cause at the end of the day. You are the provider. You’re the one responsible. So go HIPAA risk score.com. Remember H-I-P-A-A, right? And take the quiz and your score is going to equal your action. So if you got a 90% to a hundred percent, that’s excellent HIPAA readiness. You’re, you’re awesome. You’re, you’re good to go.
You probably just have to keep up with your monthly HIPAA updates and your, uh, monthly HIPAA training, and you’re good to go. If you’re in the 80 to 89%, you’re good, but you need some improvements. You might need some help. If you’re in the 70 to 79%, it’s fair. You need reinforcement and gonna know you got some really specific weak spots that you need to look at.
If you’re below 70%. You know, you are gonna be high risk and you need some immediate action and, and. You’re gonna need some help. So see where you are. No shame at all because it’s a starting point of what you need to do. Just like your patients, when they come in, that’s their starting point. So, what do I need to do to improve?
So here’s a QR code again, HIPAA risk score.com. You’re gonna find out if you have an A, B, C, D, or F. And I hope you all get an A, but if you don’t, we’re here to help you because when you get your score, if it’s not what you want, I want you to reach out because you are not alone. We are here to help our friends.
You can email us at info@betterhipaablueprint.com and we’re happy to help. We’re happy to make sure that you are going to be HIPAA compliant. So what’s your next step? If you have more questions, you just wanna find out a little bit about this whole HIPAA thing in the process, you can check us out@fearlessacupuncturist.com or you can email us at info@betterhipaablueprint.com.
If you are like, no, I know I need help, I’m good to go. I want you to schedule a demo. Go to go dot fearless provider.com/demo or use a little QR code and check it out and schedule a demo with us and we’ll show you what it’s all about and answer your questions. So be sure to take that risk quiz. And that’s it for today at the Fearless Acupuncturist.
I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for having this and inviting us to share this with you. You guys have been great, and be sure to check out our shows in the future, and I hope you have a great day. We’ll see you soon.