Background
Having earned a reputation for “catering to cowards,” The Szikman Dental Group, P.C. has been the choice for nervous patients and dental-phobics for years. In addition to ensuring patient comfort, they strive to protect personal data and establish trust in the doctors and staff. The importance of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is paramount to their staff; however, navigating the complexities of the rules has long been unclear and quite an obstacle. The Szikman Dental Group, P.C. was determined to comply with HIPAA and protect patient data, so Office Manager Anne-Marie Whisnant and her colleagues partnered with a compliance and security expert to reach their goals.
“SecurityMetrics helped us so much with the intricacies of HIPAA compliance that I feel 100 percent confident that all of our i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed!”
Anne-Marie Whisnant
Office Manager,
The Szikman Dental Group, P.C.
Challenges You Faced With HIPAA Compliance
- I went to a seminar held by the ADA on what we could expect. It was very convoluted and unclear. It almost sounded as if it was going to be a monumental and gargantuan task to get our office to be compliant, and record keeping was going to be time-prohibitive. We really weren’t sure what we were truly supposed to do or not do.
- Our record keeping wasn’t really up to par, and though I tried to keep our HIPAA binder up to date, it was easy to let deadlines slip by and forget to ensure that everything is current.
- Data security was confusing. I knew nothing of encryption when it came to emails, X-rays, hard drives or our server. Even our IT people weren’t much help in this area.
Resolving Challenges With SecurityMetrics
- SecurityMetrics walked us through every step of HIPAA Compliance. They did an initial assessment, which identified areas that we needed to improve and gave us a checklist and instructions on every step so that we knew exactly what we needed to do and not do.
- They reach out to us each year to see if we have any issues with our compliance.
- The SecurityMetrics team helped us understand the need for data security and gave us information that we were able to use along with our IT team to ensure our compliance with data encryption.
Goals Achieved Working With SecurityMetrics
- Understand and feel comfortable with the HIPAA mandate.
- Completed HIPAA risk analysis and risk management plan.
- Increased patient data security.
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