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Do You Use Employee Privacy and Security Policy and Procedure Checklist Templates?

Posted on December 21, 2020 by Jean Eaton in Blog

Why Do You Need Policy and Procedure Checklists for Onboarding and Exiting Employees?

There is much excitement when we welcome a new hire to our team and there are many administrative tasks that need to take place to get this individual up and running. An employee policy and procedure checklist will help!

Policies and procedures must be in writing, available to employees, and monitored to ensure that they are followed to protect patient privacy as required by our professional colleges and privacy legislation. Otherwise, you face all sorts of risks, including privacy breaches and other legal problems.

To ensure that onboarding a new employee is a smooth transition, it is imperative to follow a practical checklist procedure to make sure no important steps are missed. There are also many other managerial benefits to adopting this high-quality process:

  • Better job performance and satisfaction
  • Greater commitment to protecting privacy in the organization
  • Reduced stress and better staff retention

Employee Privacy and Security Policy and Procedure Checklist

Policies and procedures are reasonable safeguards to protect the personal and health information entrusted to us. But polices and good intentions alone are not enough; we also need to take action to ensure our policies are understood and are being followed by all our employees.

Training new and existing staff on privacy and security best practices is instrumental in making your healthcare practice a success and maintaining its fine reputation. Following a systematic approach to welcoming a new employee, transitioning an existing employee into a new position, or offboarding an employee who is exiting will guarantee that valuable privacy and security training and accesses are completed.

Read this Privacy Breach Nugget that explains what can happen if you don’t have these good practices in place. Do You Know Where Your Policies And Procedures Are? 

New Employee Orientation / Onboarding

New employees are a welcome addition to any team and there is a vast amount of training that needs to take place from general procedures on how to handle phone calls to signing confidentiality oaths to becoming familiar with all policies and procedures, in addition to learning the everyday job duties for their own position.

Since privacy is good for business, we do not want to miss any important opportunities to train our new staff on privacy and security best practices. Using the Employee Privacy and Security Checklist will help facilitate training discussions and document the authorized accesses of each employee.

Existing Employees / Annual Review

The checklist will also act as a tool for each employee at their performance review. Provide positive feedback and observations of an employee’s successes in protecting personal information. Discuss opportunities for improvement, too. This is also a good time to review an employee’s current authorized role-based accesses and determine if any changes are needed to match the employee’s current job duties.

Ensure that the employee still has ‘tokens’ that they were given at the time of their hire, like identity badge, keys to the clinic or Alberta Netcare RSA fob.

Privacy and security best practices dictate that confidentiality oaths should be signed on an annual basis and annual privacy awareness and security refresher training should also be provided to all employees. In the event of a privacy incident or breach, it is imperative that a healthcare practice can prove by their documentation that regular privacy and security training is provided to their staff.

Transferring / Exiting Employees

When an employee transitions into a new role or is terminated, review and update the privacy and security checklist to ensure that access and permissions are appropriately modified or terminated.

Custodian Responsibility

Custodians have an obligation to ensure reasonable safeguards to protect the privacy and security of health information. This includes having appropriate policies and procedures in place, as well as demonstrating and documenting that you have implemented your plans. This is a requirement of professional college standards of practice and privacy legislation like the Health Information Act (HIA).

See the article Do You Know Where Your Policies And Procedures Are? to learn what can happen to you if you don’t have your employee training process well documented

The Employee Privacy and Security Checklist will make it easy for you to ensure your new hires, existing employees, and transferring or exiting employees are privacy and security compliant.

 

Download the FREE Report - Employee Privacy and Security Policy and Procedure Checklist Template

Your practice also needs to have policies and procedures that set out how you ensure the privacy, confidentiality, and security of the health information you collect, use, and disclose. Don't know which policies and procedures you need? Download the Privacy and Security Policies and Procedures Checklist below!

Show Me the Policy and Procedure Checklist!

Practice Management Success

If you are a member of Practice Management Success, login and access the webinar replay, and the policy, procedure, and checklist template.

Not a member? Join today!

Did you enjoy this article? If you’d like to look at similar posts, visit these links:

Do You Know Where Your Policies And Procedures Are?

Why Do You Need Health Information Policies and Procedures?

Healthcare Policies And Procedures: Essential in EVERY Practice

New! Health Information Policy and Procedure Manuals

When we know better, we can do better…

Jean L. Eaton is constructively obsessive about privacy, confidentiality, and security expecially when it comes to the handling of personal health information. If you would like to discuss how I can help your practice, just send me an email. I am here to help you.

Jean L. Eaton
Your Practical Privacy Coach
INFORMATION MANAGERS

 

 

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New Health Information Policy and Procedure Manuals!

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Meghan in Blog

Written Health Information Policies and Procedures

Most healthcare practices have good systems in place to properly collect, use, and disclose health information – but most practices don’t have these in writing!

Patients have the right to access their personal health information but yet frequently complain about long wait times and uncooperative front office staff when trying to request their personal information.

New staff members are hired and don’t receive clear written instructions on how to perform routine health information management tasks.

Why do these same problems repeatedly appear in practice audits and privacy complaints?

The most common reason that I see is incomplete, outdated or missing written policies and procedures! It doesn’t have to be this way.

I have seen how privacy compliance and patient satisfaction improves when practices have access to written templates. But templates and checklists alone are not enough!

You know your practice better than anyone else. When you customize standard policies and procedures to best reflect your practice, you develop strategies for your daily tasks.

And, when your team receives short on-demand video tutorials about the purpose of the policies and procedures and how it impacts patient care, the staff better understand and more consistently follow the policies and procedures.

That’s why I’ve developed the Health Information Privacy and Security Policies and Procedures Manual with templates and training to help you with your health information practice management and practice management. These policies and procedures have been implemented in hundreds of practices across Alberta and Canada.

I have consulted with medical, pharmacy, chiropractic, nursing, and nurse practitioners to create practical policies and procedures for them. Now, I’ve used these best practices as templates that you can use right away!

Now For Chiropractic and Nursing, Too!

Your healthcare practice needs a Health Information Policy and Procedure Manual. Written policies and procedures assist you to correctly, efficiently, and confidently collect, use, access, and disclose health information so that you can meet your accreditation, privacy impact assessment, and regulatory compliance requirements.

  • Starting with a template saves you time and money
  • Be privacy and security compliant
  • No special software to buy or learn
  • Use your existing MS Word and MS Excel office productivity software
  • One-time fee
  • On-line support
  • Available now!
Health Information Policy and Procedure Manual

Click the >> arrow to watch a short demo of the robust manual you can create quicker than you thought possible!

Different Policy and Procedure versions available for your specific type of healthcare practice

Medical Doctor

Medical Practice

Dental Practice

Dental Practice

Chiropractor

NEW!

Chiropractic Practice

Nurse Practitioner

NEW!

Nurse Practitioner Practice

Registered Nurse

NEW!

Registered Nurse Practice

Health Information Policy and Procedure Manuals ready for you now!

Step 1: Complete the questionnaire and download the templates

Step 2: Easily generate draft 24+ policies and 28+ procedures and forms using MS Word

Step 3: Edit the documents

Step 4: Video coaching and best practices for the policies and procedures and implementation tips

Step 5: Customize for your healthcare practice

Step 6: Video orientation for your employees

Get the Reliability And Power of Policy and Procedure Templates Without Spending Hours (or Days) Creating Them.

Show me the Policy and Procedure Templates!

Did you enjoy this article? If you’d like to look at similar posts, visit these links:

Do You Know Where Your Policies and Procedures Are? 

Why Do You Need Health Information Policies and Procedures?

Healthcare Policies And Procedures: Essential in EVERY Practice

Do You Use Employee Privacy and Security Policy and Procedure Checklist Templates?

chiropractors, dentist, health information, Health Information Act, healthcare, medical clinic, Nurse Practitioners, Policies and procedures, policy, privacy and security, Privacy Impact Assessment, procedure, Registered Nurses, template

Email on mobile devices

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Jean Eaton in Blog

Is your email secure? Backed up? If you suddenly lose your email, calendar, or contact list, this could either be a speed bump in your busy day, or a nightmare that may take days or weeks and a lot of money to recover.

email_iconHaving sensitive information in your emails make it vulnerable to attack, and it could leave you, your clients, and your employees, open to identity fraud. If you have your emails on your mobile device, consider enabling ‘remote wipe' should you loose your phone.  There are a number of ways to perform remote wipe on mobile devices.

If your business authorizes emails on mobile devices, you need a policy to locate and wipe any lost devices.

You can also encrypt both emails and other data and voice messages between mobile devices. Pretty Good Privacy or PGP is a popular program used to encrypt and decrypt email over the Internet, as well as authenticate messages with digital signatures and encrypted stored files. Peer-to-Peer encryption can also be used.

Most smart phones allow you to change your settings to encrypt the data on your phone.

Why encrypt?

Think of it this way. If all of your information on a mobile device – even the simple family photos, address contact book, emails and all the attachments – suddenly appeared in someone else's hands – would you want them to read it? Why wouldn't you encrypt your data? Give yourself peace of mind just in case you loose your mobile device.

Celebrate Data Privacy Day with Information Managers!

Follow Data Privacy Day around the world using Twitter and #DPD15.

We are proud to be a Data Privacy Day Champ!

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