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HIPAA update: On April 14, privacy rules
 

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ith the enactment of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) legislation regulating the privacy of patients’ health care information only two weeks away, Children’s is in the final stretch of training all staff and employees to incorporate the new standards into their daily work lives.

The section of the rule that affects all of us is the “privacy rule,” which includes the safeguards that staff and employees should use to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the “protected health information” of Children’s patients.

In-person privacy training sessions have been underway since mid-February. As of last week, the HIPAA training team, composed of Mary Radley, HIPAA privacy officer and project co-leader, Mary Rile, PhD, RN, project co-leader, Jane Murphy, and Shari Bedar, HIPAA project manager, had conducted more than 75 in-person departmental training sessions, with another 55 scheduled to be completed by April 7.

Other employees are using the online training materials designed for Laboratory Medicine, Ambulatory Program staff, and clinicians, including medical, house and nursing staff. These materials can be found here. Staff who take the online training are required to complete a competency exam at the end of the session.

In an effort headed by Susan Kornetsky, MPH, director of Clinical Research Compliance, Bruce Zetter, PhD, vice president for Research, and Patrick Taylor, Esq., general counsel, Children’s Committee on Clinical Investigations in February launched a HIPAA Web site for staff and employees involved in clinical research. The site has a training tool that helps staff review education materials, and a tutorial composed of a series of situations a researcher may encounter, followed by multiple choice questions. After staff and employees have successfully completed the tutorial, their names are automatically added to the training database, which is maintained by the Committee on Clinical Investigation administrative office. This serves as verification of completion of HIPAA training. The training tool can be found here.

Although the HIPAA training team’s tallies are not final, they estimate that close to 2,000 Children’s staff and employees have already learned about how their work will be impacted by HIPAA and their responsibility to protect patient information. In addition, hundreds of Children’s volunteers have received a newsletter including a series of scenarios that they are likely to encounter.

All staff and employees are required to complete HIPAA privacy training by April 14. If you have not yet heard about HIPAA or privacy training scheduled for your area, contact Shari Bedar at ext. 5-2798.

Related links:

Children's HIPAA site (internal users only)

Children's HIPAA training tool

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services HIPAA site

 

 

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