Growing HIPAA Focus Leads To Fresh Compliance Options

Susan Huntington and Eric Fader were quoted in an article, "Growing HIPAA Focus Leads To Fresh Compliance Options," published in Law360. The article features Day Pitney's recently updated HIPAA self-assessment tool, which was designed to provide an easy and cost-effective way for organizations to perform a self-assessment of HIPAA compliance based on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights ("OCR") expanded audit protocol. According to Law360, the tool "distills the technical requirements of HIPAA's privacy, security and breach notification requirements into straightforward questions that are easier for companies to tackle than trying to take on the rule in its entirety." Huntington told Law360 that the self-assessment tool offers companies an alternative to hiring outside consultants, which can be extremely expensive and time-consuming. "We thought that with our tool, we would model it on areas that OCR identified as being important in their audits and allow organizations to do their own self-assessments, which is very cost-effective and helps them identify the areas they need to focus on," Huntington said. Fader told Law360 that the tool can help health care providers improve their HIPAA compliance. "The important thing is that you've done an assessment," he said. "Hopefully, this tool can be the first step maybe not toward being perfect, because very few organizations are at 100 percent, but of getting from 50 percent or 60 percent to 95 percent, which will be looked favorably upon by OCR if there is ever an investigation."