HIPAA Online Training for Privacy and Security Rule Compliance

HIPAA online training for Privacy and Security Rule compliance enables covered entities and business associates to outsource the basic elements of a HIPAA training program to advance workforce understanding of HIPAA when they are trained on the policies and procedures specific to their functions.

Benefits of HIPAA Online Training

Developing your own training course from scratch can be very time consuming. You will need to develop a HIPAA training course that is geared to the needs of different employees for Privacy Rule compliance. You will then need to develop a security awareness training program for Security Rule compliance. You must then ensure you keep the training courses up to date to take into account any HIPAA updates and changes in best practices.

The costs and program management requirements of developing your own course can be mitigated by outsourcing foundation HIPAA training so that all members of the workforce have an understanding of HIPAA before being educated on the policies and procedures that apply to their roles. With an outsourced third-party training course, all of the basics are taken care of by the training provider, which allows you to put time, money, and effort into other important projects.

With third-party training, one option is to have a training company come to your place of work to provide the training. The problem with this option is you will need to make sure all employees are available at a set time to take the training course, which can cause major disruption to workflows. This may be a good option for a small practice or a vendor with a small workforce, but problems can arise – What happens if someone is off sick and misses the training? This option can also be prohibitively expensive.

Opting for HIPAA online training is often the better choice as it is far cheaper. The other major advantage is HIPAA online training is much easier to fit in with workflows. Whenever a member of staff has time free, they can access the training course on their computer. If you choose a modular training course, modules can be completed as and when employees have spare time. If there is an emergency, the training can simply be paused and the HIPAA online training course can be resumed at another time.

HIPAA online training will also allow you to easily see how far individuals have progressed with their training and who has completed their training course. Training is recorded for you and logs can be shown to regulators I the event of an audit.

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Online HIPAA training courses are

• Easy to fit into busy workflows.
• Can be completed whenever employees have a few minutes spare.
• Much cheaper than having a third-party trainer visit your place of work.
• Much cheaper than developing your own training course from scratch.
• You will not have to update basic training when HIPAA Rules change.
• Training courses will be updated to take new best practices into account.

Will Online HIPAA Training Courses Cover Everything?

Online HIPAA training courses will save you time and money and will help to ensure you remain compliant, but a training course will not cover everything. An online HIPAA training course will naturally not include any training material that is specific to your organization, such as your internal privacy and security policies or your procedures.

Some HIPAA online training courses have been developed to be flexible and will allow you to modify the training material or add extra content specific to your organization. That includes adding questions to end of module Q&As, or supplementing the course with your own slides and presentations.  These courses will save you considerable time and effort and can easily be adapted to match your internal policies and procedures.

Also look for a training course that provides some kind of documentation or certification that training has been completed and that records employees’ legal attestations that they have received HIPAA training, understood it, and agree to apply the training at work.

Suggested Course Content

When it comes to HIPAA training, a one-size-fits-all approach is not recommended. The training that a member of the admin staff needs will be different to the training required by a nurse or physician. Training should be tailored to the role of each individual in the organization.

This is where modular online HIPAA training courses are useful. The entire training course may be appropriate for some individuals, but modular courses allow you to simply select the appropriate modules for each job role. This will keep the time spent training to a minimum to avoid disruption to workflows and is especially useful for conducting refresher training.

Some of the important online HIPAA training modules that should be included in any training course are detailed below:

• HIPAA overview.
• HIPAA definitions & terminology.
• Main HIPAA regulatory rules.
• HIPAA Privacy Rule.
• HIPAA Security Rule.
• HIPAA Omnibus Final Rule.
• The HITECH Act.
• HIPAA patient rights.
• HIPAA PHI disclosure rules.
• HIPAA violation consequences.
• Preventing HIPAA violations.
• Patient authorizations.
• Business associate agreements.
• HIPAA and social media.
• HIPAA and emergency situations.
• The Role of the HIPAA officer.

For security awareness training for HIPAA Security Rule compliance:

• Threats to patient data.
• Malware and ransomware.
• How to identify phishing and social engineering threats.
• Email security.
• Web security.
• Protecting PHI from cyber threats.
• Personal devices and removable media.
• Public WiFi network security.
• Secure file sharing.
• Use of unauthorized software, hardware, and apps.
• Insider threats.
• Physical security.
• Reporting HIPAA violations.
• Cybersecurity best practices.

HIPAA Online Training FAQs