Law Students

Part V of this series can be found here. This post focuses on Internet resources and stresses the importance of leveraging what is available.

There are a significant number of high quality resources now available on the Internet. Some of the best information is starting to come from the Federal agencies themselves. HHS in particular has done an outstanding job of providing high quality content related to HIPAA compliance.

The following links are representative:

HHS Privacy Rule Portal

The following URL is the entry point to the HHS Health Information Privacy portal. If you are looking for regulatory information regarding HIPAA's Privacy rule this is where you should start.

HHS Health Information Privacy

HHS Security Rule Portal

The following URL is the entry point to the HHS Security Standard portal. If you are looking for regulatory information regarding HIPAA's Security rule this is where you should start.

HHS Overview Security Standard

Of special note on the page above is a link to the HIPAA Security Educational Paper Series.This series is must reading for your HIT staff.

A more expansive list of industry related sites can be found on the HIPAA Survival Guide's(HSG) resources page here. In future releases of the guide additional reference information will be made available and categorized by a "to be developed" taxonomy.

The problem now is not the availability of high quality content but rather that there is too much of it, and therefore raw search technology only goes so far in addressing the needle in the haystack problem.The intent of HSG's resources page(s) is to provide enough reference links on a given topic to get the reader pointed in the right direction.

Recently, the full text of the HITECH Act was added to HSG online so that you can point and click to a relevant section of the statute and thereby read the primary authority as it is written, as opposed to relying on someone else's interpretation.

The next release of the HSG online version will also contain not only our paraphrased interpretation of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, but the full text as well. In every place that a section of the Rules refers to another section (which happens often) you will be able to click on the referenced section.

In short, while the content available on the Internet is not a panacea, it is certainly a good idea to leverage what is out there. If you would like more information regarding EHR implementations, and related compliance issues, sign up for our FREE HITECH/HIPAA Compliance Newsletter.