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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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