Privacy for Long Term Care: HIPAA in 48 Hours

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) demands change in health care privacy. While health care providers may object to government regulation and think of HIPAA as a broken hip, they may use this manual to help fix that broken hip. This do-it-yourself, simple compliance aid is for HIPAA privacy requirements for small, independent long-term care (LTC) facilities. The forms, policies, procedures, training material, audit tables, and contracts support a compliance program that reduces distractions for the staff, while increasing service to the resident.
HIPAA compliance should be easy for the small, independent LTC facility. The Privacy Rule recognizes the need for small entities to have different approaches from large entities. Small entities should agree on an approach to HIPAA and thus proactively define their compliance standard. Following this Manual, a prototypical stand-alone LTC facility with about 100 beds can implement a HIPAA compliance program in 48 hours.