Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | October 30, 2017 | Worcester Business Journal 23 Y ou already know how important it is to be HIPAA compliant. A lot of businesses, including regis- tered marijuana dispensa- ries, get confused about the require- ments, when it comes to dealing with protected health information. It can get a little fuzzy, if you're not privy to the big picture. The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act was created in order to set a standard for safeguarding pri- vate patient information. Any entity dealing with this kind of protected health information (PHI) is required to ensure all the mandatory processes, net- work and physical security protocols have been put in place. Prior to these laws, there was no standard for securing PHI. As the medical, healthcare and other covered entities began to techno- logically advance, there was a move- ment away from the paper process. More and more businesses began to use electronic data systems to provide clini- cally based functions, answer eligibility questions and pay claims. Why is this important? Keep in mind the major goal of the HIPAA compliance law is to protect the privacy of individuals' PHI, while allowing covered businesses, including registered marijuana dispensaries, to 10 T H I NG S I know about . . . ... starting a business from scratch By Joy Rachelle Murrieta Murrieta is co-founder and executive director of nonprofit Main IDEA Youth & Arts and community outreach coordinator for The Worcester Music Academy. Reach her at info@mainidea.org K N O W H O W Three crucial keys to understanding HIPAA compliance J ournaling, or keeping a diary, isn't just for angst-ridden teenagers any- more. Upper-level executives find developing the simple habit of keeping a journal each day helps their leadership skills by bringing new insight into areas of decision-making, partnership dynamics and more. Here are some potential advantages to jotting down your day's events as a new best practice. Brand-new perspective brings bene- fits. Keeping a journal offers insight into yourself you may otherwise not have, said Jessica Stillman at Inc.com, poten- tially opening up areas where you may otherwise be stuck. She quotes Madeline Stilley, who began keeping a journal, writing at the end of her workday. "This tool assisted me in pinpointing commu- nication errors, enhancing relationships with colleagues, and learning to be a better listener … It improved my aware- ness and decision-making," she said. The practice, she said, can take less than 10 minutes a day. It eases you into recovery from a work day. "Journal sessions are your post-work reflection time. Account to yourself what you got done that day and what needs to be moved to tomor- row," writes Success.com's Benjamin P. Hardy, taking pride in what was accomplished. That way your time away from work can truly be focused on your partner and family. Keeping a work journal can help you create bal- ance: The simple act symbolizes leav- ing the work day behind, he said. Patterns emerge, creating cross- roads. We're all busy. So the kind of big-picture reflection resulting from keeping a work diary is something many of us don't make time to do. Some themes coming forth through journaling may be negative, but could be the onus for change. "A few sessions writing in your journal could lead to a breakthrough that gets you to change careers," companies, or even go into business for yourself, says BusinessInsider.com. BY SUSAN SHALHOUB Special to the Worcester Business Journal 10 1: K e e p i n g a w o r k j o u r n a l 10) Find the need. You know that one thing your community doesn't have, that you can't help but notice and get annoyed with? That's your foothold for entrepreneurship. 9) Brainstorm ways to fill the need. It's easy to complain about something that's not getting done, but it takes an entrepreneur to initiate taking the time to creative-problem solve. 8) Put the work in. Start making a list of actions each person can do, and what you can do collectively, and hold each other accountable. Create a timeline; some projects take weeks, others years. Create short term and long-term goals. 7) Stay focused. As your ideas build off of each other, remember what your main goal is. Create a mission statement to keep you centered. 6) Get organized. Assign roles and/or jurisdiction for different parts of the project to keep your team from stepping on each others' toes. Make sure someone is in charge of administration. 5) Choose a brand. How do you want your work to be known? Put the idea into a name and logo, and stick to it whenever communicating your project. 4) Pace yourself and make boundaries. It's easy to get carried away when you're excited and there's a lot of work to do, but remember you're human, not a robot, and consequently need things like rest and sleep and food and play. 3) Be flexible and open to change. Perhaps circumstances change to cause you to need to adapt to a different reality than when you first started. 2) You won't know until you try. So this has never been done in your community before, and you've never started something out of nothing. Yeah, well, so goes the story of every entrepreneur who's ever started out. 1) Take heart. It takes a lot of self- assurance and confidence to be an entrepreneur. It is not for the faint of heart! W Michelle Drolet is CEO of Towerwall, a data security services provider in Framingham. You may reach her at michelled@ towerwall.com. work with new technologies. These technologies often assist and increase the efficiency and quality of the care provided. With the advance of these technologies comes increased risk of exposing PHI. Without the privacy rule, a patient's information could very likely, without patient consent, end up being passed on to their employer. This employer then could use the information to make personal decisions in the workplace. Another scenario could be a lender getting their hands on the patient's health information and then using that to deny the patient's application for a credit card, auto loan or home mortgage. In order to avoid this, it is imperative covered businesses do all they can to be HIPAA compliant. Three keys to compliance: PIE 1. Protect against wrongful and impermissible abuse of PHI and other unauthorized disclosures. This includes ensuring compliance by your workforce. 2. Identify and secure against any threats to the safety of all PHI. 3. Ensure the safety, integrity, confi- dentiality, privacy and accessibility of all PHI transmitted, maintained, received and/or created. A business associate can be any third party working with patient records and/ or claims processing: accountants, attor- neys, consultants, and registered mari- juana dispensaries. If they service health- care entities and have access to PHI, they are all included under HIPAA's defini- tion of business associates. In summary, what you want to focus on is the big picture. Covered entities are required to protect patient health information. You are allowed to disclose PHI only to business associates whose services you use, granted you obtain sat- isfactory assurances. Therefore, your priority is to ensure your business asso- ciates will comply with HIPAA and safe- guard the PHI they are transacting with throughout your relationship. Obtaining satisfactory assurances means getting it in writing, according to HIPAA compli- ance guidelines. BY MICHELLE DROLET Special to the Worcester Business Journal W W

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