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Overview: Have you ever had a student who was excessively dramatic or who repeatedly monopolized discussions in a know-it-all, domineering, or aggressive fashion? Perhaps you've encountered a student who was so odd or anxious that they weren't able to participate in group activities or complete assignments. It's hard to know what to do when a student's personality just seems to take over your class, but you can't just stand by and do nothing. If they are not managed effectively, students with personality disorders take up a lot of time and can move your whole class in counterproductive directions. Sometimes these challenging students have a Personality Disorder, which is a persistent pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and themselves that is maladaptive, rigid, pervasive, and enduring. Personality Disorders also manifest in the student's emotional response and impulse control and can negatively impact classroom teaching and learning as well as a student's personal and academic success. Unless you are a particular student's psychiatrist, it's not your job to diagnose them as having a personality disorder, but it is helpful to recognize and understand signs of a personality disorder. This webinar will identify different personality disorders and review their common traits and characteristics. You will learn essential tools for dealing with Personality Disorders such as boundary setting, clear communication, and effective classroom management. In addition, you will review relevant mental health resources and when and how to make appropriate referrals to counseling, accessibility services, and student conduct. Why should you attend: If students with personality disorders are not managed effectively, their behavior can have a negative impact on teaching and learning. Areas Covered in the Session: Ten types of Personality Disorders Prevalence and Demographics Developmental issues Common traits and characteristics of Personality Dis

Overview: This lesson is going to get back to the basics using multiple real life scenarios and "what if's". My goal is to make this very confusing and not well explained law easy to understand for the typical staff member. I will uncover myths versus reality as it relates to this enigmatic law based on over 1000 risk assessments performed as well as years of experience in dealing directly with the Office of Civil Rights HIPAA auditors. I will also point out multiple court cases I have been affiliated with where a staff member of a hospital or clinic has been sued or even imprisoned! I will also speak to real life audits conducted by the Federal government (I've been on both sides of these audits) what your highest risks are for being fined (some of the risk factors may surprise you). In addition this course will cover the highest risk factors for being sued for wrongful disclosures of PHI and the manner in which patients are now using state laws to sue for wrongful disclosures. Don't always believe what you read online about HIPAA, especially as it relates to encryption and IT, there are a lot of groups selling more than is necessarily required. Why should you Attend: Are you confused about HIPAA? Do you just want the basics and in plain English? Do you know there are civil and criminal penalties even for the rank and file staff member! Do you know what you can and can't do with protected health information? It is important to understand the new changes going on at Health and Human Services as it relates to enforcement of HIPAA for both covered entities and business associates as it relates to portable devices, texting, and emailing of PHI. You need to know how to avoid being low hanging fruit in terms of audit risk as well as being sued by individuals who have had their PHI wrongfully discloses due to bad IT practices. I have also been expert witness on multiple court cases where a business or medical practice is being sued for not doing their due diligence

Overview: Participants will understand the importance of responding to the OCR pre-audit requests and how to respond. Our discussion will cover how to prepare for an anticipated OCR HIPAA privacy audit, by discussing how to conduct an internal self-assessment of your privacy program. We will discuss how to conduct the self-assessment, whether it be the need for policies, procedures or obtaining all of your business associates information. Why should you Attend: If you have received a request from the OCR to provide the name of your entities privacy official and additional criteria, you are already aware that you are on the OCR's radar and may be the focus of an audit. If you haven't received a request yet, anticipate receiving one soon. In addition to ensuring that your HIPAA program is audit ready, you also need to ensure that you know all of your business associates and have their information readily available to provide to the OCR. Your entity needs to be ready now, as the OCR will either conduct focused desk audits, on-site audits or both in effort to review documentation of evidence of your compliance with the HIPAA regulation. Areas Covered in the Session: Office of Civil Rights "OCR" requests for privacy official and additional information and timeline for response Internal assessment criteria of privacy program in anticipation of an OCR audit Conducting the assessment using the template based upon HIPAA regulations Discuss methods to address any found deficiencies Workforce training Who Will Benefit: Healthcare providers Compliance and Internal Audit professionals or office staff responsible for ensuring patient privacy Healthcare Administrators Business Associates and all HIPAA Covered Entities Speaker Profile Gail Madison Brown is a registered nurse and an attorney with over 25 years of experience in health care. For the last 15 years she has focused on health care compliance and revenue cycle management operations. Gail's experience ranges

Overview: This lesson will be going into great detail regarding your practice or business information technology and how it relates to the HIPAA Security Rule, in particular portable devices. Areas covered will be texting, email, encryption, medical messaging, voice data and risk factors as they relate to IT. I will uncover myths versus reality as it relates to this very enigmatic law based on over 600 risk assessments performed as well as years of experience in dealing directly with the Office of Civil Rights HIPAA auditors. I will also speak to real life audits conducted by the Federal government (I've been on both sides of these audits) what your highest risks are for being fined (some of the risk factors may surprise you). In addition this course will cover the highest risk factors for being sued for wrongful disclosures of PHI and the manner in which patients are now using state laws to sue for wrongful disclosures. Don't always believe what you read online about HIPAA, especially as it relates to encryption and IT, there are a lot of groups selling more than is necessarily required. Why should you Attend: HIPAA NOW HAS TEETH! Be prepared for what's new in 2016! Protect your practice or business! What factors might spurn a HIPAA audit? …are you doing these things? Why are the Feds enforcing after all these years? It is important to understand the new changes going on at Health and Human Services as it relates to enforcement of HIPAA for both covered entities and business associates as it relates to portable devices, texting, and emailing of PHI. You need to know how to avoid being low hanging in terms of audit risk as well as being sued by individuals who have had their PHI wrongfully discloses due to bad IT practices. I have also been expert witness on multiple court cases where a business or medical practice is being sued for not doing their due diligence to minimize risk. Areas Covered in the Session: Updates for 2016 BYOD Portable devices B

Overview: One of the major requirements of the health care organization to be HIPAA compliant is to develop and implement a set of HIPAA privacy and security policies and procedures. This can be a daunting task for those not knowing where to start and what a set of HIPAA privacy and security policies and procedures should look like. For the cost conscious health care organization, the HIPAA policies and procedures can have multiple uses: first, they can become a basis for training the health care organization workforce; second, they can be used as a basis for conducting a HIPAA self-assessment; and third, they can be used to demonstrate due diligence should there be a breach or an externalHIPAA compliance audit. In today's world it is not necessary that the health care organization spend significant funds to develop a set of HIPAA privacy and security policies and procedures from scratch. The health care organization can likely find templates on the internet that can be used as a starting point to customize HIPAA policies and procedures to be unique for the health care organization. The preparation of a well-documented set of HIPAA policies and procedures needs to be addressed through the development of Privacy and Security policies and procedures that address each of the requirements shown in the HIPAA regulations as amended by the HITECH law and the final Omnibus Regulations. The process of developing the HIPAA privacy and security policies and procedures also provides a reference for the health care organization how to consider the security addressable and required regulation requirements. Why should you attend: There are three situations where having a set of HIPAA policies and procedures are needed: First, the policies and procedures become a good reference to ensure that all areas are addressed for becoming HIPAA compliant. Second, the HIPAA regulations REQUIRE covered entities and business associates to have a set of policies and procedures directing

Overview: The primary goal of this session is to demonstrate why the health care organization needs to perform a risk assessment and how to perform the risk assessment. This includes a description of the types of breaches of protected health information that have already occurred and the reasons those breaches happened. The presentation then provides that reasons that a risk assessment is required in a health care organization and who needs to perform the assessment. There are a number of approaches available both for purchase on the web and performed by professionals on site. This discussion helps the participant determine which approach is best for their health care organization and what portions of the assessment are most important to the organization. The topic addresses the key components of a risk assessment and how to perform the risk assessment. This includes how to define the specific risks, how to know, how to assess the likelihood and impact of the risk and the final determination on the level of severity of the risk for the organization. Finally, the session explains how to interpret the results of the risk assessment, how to use the results of the risk assessment for preparing the health care organization's policies and procedures and how to conduct the HIPAA training for its staff. Why should you attend: In addition to the negative publicity and potential fines, a breach of a patient's health information often leads to litigation which is also time consuming and costly. The way to avoid these situations is to perform a Risk Assessment to understand where the health care organization is risk of an unauthorized breach and provide a basis for becoming HIPAA compliant. There are three reasons why a Risk Assessment is necessary: First, both the HIPAA Privacy and Security Regulations require a Risk Assessment for the organization to be HIPAA compliant Second, as a result of the Risk Assessment the organization knows where it needs to address its effo

Overview: Participants will learn how to conduct an investigation of allegations of patient privacy violations using a privacy "risk analysis" tool and steps that should be taken when a breach has been determined. Why should you Attend: You must conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of all allegations of privacy violations. A violation of a patient's privacy may result in monetary penalties, harm to your reputation and especially harm to a patient. You need to make certain your organization has the expertise to conduct a thorough privacy investigation, analyze the results and take all necessary action to mitigate and report violations when required. Areas Covered in the Session: Best practices for conducting a privacy investigation Use of the risk analysis tool Interpretation of your results Reporting requirements if necessary Recommendations of continued privacy monitoring Workforce training Who Will Benefit: Healthcare providers Compliance and Internal Audit professionals or office staff responsible for ensuring patient privacy Healthcare Administrators Business Associates and all HIPAA Covered Entities Speaker Profile : Gail Madison Brown is a registered nurse and an attorney with over 25 years of experience in health care. For the last 15 years she has focused on health care compliance and revenue cycle management operations. Gail's experience ranges from starting new compliance programs and making improvements to existing programs for physician practices to large health care organizations. Gail also has provided numerous lectures to healthcare providers, executives and professional colleagues. Gail Madison Brown will develop, implement, and oversee processes, systems, educational programs, and other activities necessary to support and grow clinical trials activities at the UT Health Science Center. The Chief Clinical Trails Officer (CCTO) provides overall strategic leadership in this area including planning, goal setting, and monitoring organ

Seminar on Analytical Instrument Qualification and Validation: Understanding to Prepare for FDA Audits to become Part 11 Compliant at Boston, MA Course "Analytical Instrument Qualification and Validation: Understanding to Prepare for FDA Audits to become Part 11 Compliant" has been pre-approved by RAPS as eligible for up to 12 credits towards a participant's RAC recertification upon full completion. Overview: In this two day workshop conference you will learn the different global agencies expectations of analytical equipment qualification along with the development of a sound process validation program in order to develop and implement bulletproof solutions that are accepted, effective, and efficient. Through case study analysis we will examine best practices to provide thoughts and ideas to develop or improve the performance of your current system. Additionally, case studies will explore how your management practices of your analytical equipment qualification/ validation and process validation programs can help or hurt your legal liability and the legal issues that arise from nonconformance with regulators and Auditors. This seminar will help attendees understand the instrument qualification and system validation processes and will provide instruction on how to prepare for FDA audits and how to become part 11 compliant. Why should you attend? The cost of non-compliance is therefore more than that of compliance. Are you in compliance with the FDA regulations for analytical equipment qualification and validation in your facility? Areas Covered in the Session: * Learn about the regulatory background and requirements for laboratory instrument qualification and system validation * Understand the logic and principles of instrument qualification and system validation from validation planning reporting * Understand and be able to explain your company's qualification and validation strategies * Be able to independently prepare execute test protocols, this includes s

Course "Supplier Management for Medical Device Manufacturers" has been pre-approved by RAPS as eligible for up to 12 credits towards a participant's RAC recertification upon full completion. Overview: Supplier selection and management is one of the critical issues for medical device manufacturers. Suppliers provide materials and services to the device manufacturer, which means that they can be critical to performance and delivery of your device. Neither the FDA nor your notified body regulates your suppliers (with a few exceptions). They expect you to have an effective process to ensure your suppliers perform in the regulatory environment. How well do you understand the requirements for supplier management? Could you pass a regulatory audit or inspection without any issues? This course delivers the tools, templates, and methods to help participants implement an effective and efficient supplier management program. This two-day hands-on course provides a clear understanding of the underlying principles of supplier management. The course uses exercises to solidify understanding. In addition, the course uses FDA Warning Letters to illustrate the points and help you learn from others. As part of the practical implementation, the course includes receiving acceptance activities, outsourced processes, process validation at the suppliers' location, supplier auditing techniques, and supplier issues in management review. The course uses the Global Harmonization Task Force (GHTF) framework, but expands it to cover other issues and techniques important in effective implementation. Why should you attend: Since FDA regulations do not allow them to audit your suppliers unless they make finished medical devices, they require that you have sufficient control over them. But from time to time the FDA makes a reinterpretation of what this means. This happened within the last f 5 years, so if you supplier management program is older than that, you need to make major changes in you supp

Course "Marketing Products without Getting Hammered by FDA" has been pre-approved by RAPS as eligible for up to 12 credits towards a participant's RAC recertification upon full completion. Overview: With this seminar you will learn how to navigate FDA's legal requirements and its interpretations for enforcement purposes. The agency now applies the principles of cognitive psychology to aid in its determination of what a message really conveys. This becomes a new factor in trying to stay within FDA's legal corral. This conference will provide insight on how to manage your marketing activity and gauge what regulatory risks your business is willing to accept. You will learn how corporate management requires cooperation between marketing, regulatory affairs, legal counsel, manufacturing, engineering and finance departments. You will understand that a weak link in any department leaves the entire corporation vulnerable to FDA enforcement. Most importantly, you will understand the boundaries that FDA uses and how easy it is to cross them. With information from this course, you can step back and rationally evaluate your firm's regulatory profile for advertising and promotion. Why should you attend: If you go "off label" with advertising and promotion, you become embroiled in FDA's advertising and promotion requirements. For devices, the law is weak and lacks legal clarity. For drugs, FDA's law and regulations are extensive and have violated Constitutional protections. Depending on your point of FDA's promotion and advertising requirements can help you or hurt you? There is an inherent conflict in interests. In any case, you need to identify practical criteria to make marketing decisions. That begs the question of whether or not marketing managers and regulatory affairs managers will even try to agree on an issue. FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) has never issued a comprehensive guidance on advertising and promotion. You are on your own. CDER has esta

Course "Effective and Efficient Internal and Supplier Quality System Auditing for Medical Devices" has been pre-approved by RAPS as eligible for up to 12 credits towards a participant's RAC recertification upon full completion. Overview: Do you want to understand how to do efficient and effective internal and supplier audits that meet all the requirements of your external auditors, but also add value to your company? Are you confused by all the requirements and guidance documents for medical device quality management systems and are tired of wading through all the regulatory language they contain. This course is for those who will do internal or supplier audits, manage an audit process for these or other company audits. This course will provide you with an easy to understand presentation on the auditing process as well as the requirements you will need to audit under ISO 13485 and the FDA Quality System Regulation (cGMP) Both FDA Quality System Regulation (QSR) and ISO 13485 require that companies do internal audits. However, because the FDA does not look at the content of internal audits, some companies do not get feedback on the true effectiveness of their internal audit system from the FDA during FDA Inspections. ISO 13485 auditors do look at internal audits, but are most concerned that you define a process that meets the requirements of the standard and are following your process. Both require that you define Auditor training is required, but this sometimes just requires reading the company's procedure, although most external auditors will look for more than this. Do you need to train new auditors for yours medical device quality management system or to audit your suppliers? Or do you need to improve the training of your internal and supplier auditors so that they add value to these audits? If you need to do either of these, this seminar will provide this training. In addition to auditing skills and hands-on auditing exercises, this seminar will provide an ove

Overview: Mental health care practitioners work in today's diverse, fast-changing, multidisciplinary health care environment. Nowhere but in mental health is there such diversity of clinicians who provide the same or similar services of counseling and therapy. A potential client has a wide choice of mental health providers from whom to choose. Yet each individual mental health profession has a unique education, training, and experience requirement for practice. While similarities exist, requirements differ from state to state and even from profession to profession with a single state. What are these requirements and how do they apply? The state's authority and power over mental health practitioners often presents challenges to these mental health professionals that are not easy to navigate. Differing sources of legal and ethical authority govern each respective health care practitioner in ways that are similar but not the same. Ethics and law are similar, but not the same. All mental health practitioners must adhere to standards of state law which govern their professional practices, including the very core of the doctor-patient relationship. Codes of ethics and state law may both apply to govern the conduct of this clinician. Even some state laws are referred to as ethical codes. Complaints as to alleged misconduct or ethical failings are received and investigated by a state agency and leave the mental health practitioner with an uncertain process to handle and to defend the state action against them. With this background, this seminar empowers the full understanding and application of ethics and laws for mental health practitioners. Learn to identify and understand an ethical framework for a sound mental health practice. An ethical framework is essential to having the right perspective to examine mental health dilemmas. Compare and contrast regulatory laws and codes of ethics to understand their differing applicability. Know the difference between laws and ethics,

Overview: The presentation takes the participant through the steps needed to ensure a successful health care computer system implementation. Once presented the participant will see the logic of the tools and processes and be able to apply them to their system implementation. The tools and processes presented in this material have been developed by implementing health care systems for over 40 years and seeing what has worked and WHY it has worked. These tools and processes have been equally and successfully applied to the implementation of large, complex systems and smaller, simpler systems for large, multidepartment organizations and for small health care organizations. The process focuses on establishing the project's implementation expectations, identifying meaningful metrics for success, establishing project plans, assigning individual accountabilities and responsibilities, establishing and executing project tasks, monitoring project progress and validating project success. To establish viable project expectations, the presentation addresses the need for bringing all of the stakeholders (organization owners, providers and management, operations staff, IT staff and the vendor) into establishing common and realizable expectations. These are reviewed in context of the organization's current environment and its short and long term goals and are considered as a critical part of the implementation completion process. In the case of turning around an already troubled or failed system implementation, the process emphasizes the tasks of reassessing the project stakeholder expectations - why they decided the system would help the organization and what they expected to get from the system. Next the process shows the participant how to convert these expectations to realistic and measurable project success metrics. The process focuses on learning how to separate "so what" metrics from meaningful and measurable metrics. In addition, the process provides direction regardin

Overview: This lesson will be going into great detail regarding your practice or business information technology and how it relates to the HIPAA Security Rule, in particular portable devices. Areas covered will be texting, email, encryption, medical messaging, voice data and risk factors as they relate to IT. I will uncover myths versus reality as it relates to this very enigmatic law based on over 600 risk assessments performed as well as years of experience in dealing directly with the Office of Civil Rights HIPAA auditors. I will also speak to real life audits conducted by the Federal government (I've been on both sides of these audits) what your highest risks are for being fined (some of the risk factors may surprise you). In addition this course will cover the highest risk factors for being sued for wrongful disclosures of PHI and the manner in which patients are now using state laws to sue for wrongful disclosures. Don't always believe what you read online about HIPAA, especially as it relates to encryption and IT, there are a lot of groups selling more than is necessarily required. Why should you Attend: HIPAA NOW HAS TEETH! Be prepared for what's new in 2016! Protect your practice or business! What factors might spurn a HIPAA audit? …are you doing these things? Why are the Feds enforcing after all these years? It is important to understand the new changes going on at Health and Human Services as it relates to enforcement of HIPAA for both covered entities and business associates as it relates to portable devices, texting, and emailing of PHI. You need to know how to avoid being low hanging in terms of audit risk as well as being sued by individuals who have had their PHI wrongfully discloses due to bad IT practices. I have also been expert witness on multiple court cases where a business or medical practice is being sued for not doing their due diligence to minimize risk. Areas Covered in the Session: Updates for 2016 BYOD Portable devices B

Overview: The objectives of this course will be to go over the specific risks associated with business associates as it relates to HIPAA compliance. I will uncover myths versus reality as it relates to this very enigmatic law based on over 600 risk assessments performed as well as years of experience in dealing directly with the Office of Civil Rights HIPAA auditors. Times have changed and unfortunately many businesses are losing clients or unable to get new clients due to problems with their compliance program or lack of a compliance program. I will demonstrate from real life audits conducted by the Federal government what your highest risks are for being fined (some of the risk factors may surprise you). In addition this course will cover the highest risk factors for being sued for wrongful disclosures of PHI and the manner in which patients are now using state laws to sue for wrongful disclosures. States are being encouraged by the Federal government to implement new laws to remedy their citizens. Why should you Attend: Protect your business! Business associates are now required to comply directly with the HIPAA legislation! Many businesses are losing clients or unable to get clients because of compliance issues. We will be discussing the changes taking place in Washington DC with the Health and Human Services in relating to new risks business associates face under HIPAA. I will also be discussing factors might cause an unwanted visit or letter from the Office of Civil Rights and how to prepare for the audit and deal with the Feds Areas Covered in the Session: Updates for 2016 What to do if a client requires more than just a signed business associate agreement Fines Policy and Procedure Who Will Benefit: Any business associates who work with medical practices or hospitals (i.e. billing companies, transcription companies, IT companies, answering services, home health, coders, attorneys, etc) Speaker Profile Brian Tuttle is a Certified Professional in H

Overview: Safe hospital care in neither a science nor an art. It is a practice just like the practice by a doctor who combines hindsight of experience and foresight of imagination to come up with an outsight of the best interventions and best protocols. Over time the doctor standardizes the process but is vigilant to any unique requirements of each patient. Such an approach in patient safety is called hazard analysis and mitigation process. This webinar goes a big step farther. It covers innovation strategies to assure that the safety improvements result in a high return on investment and high value to the hospital, and protects the patients. Why should you Attend: About 400,000 patients die each year from hospital mistakes according to a senate hearing. Evidence based methods to reduce adverse, sentinel, and never events are available and successful in aerospace, nuclear, and chemical industries. Why not use them? We need a paradigm shift. We need it in a hurry! You cannot cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Do not be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. No noble thing can be done without risks Areas Covered in the Session: The Etiologies of Unsafe Care Sufficient Understanding is a Pre-requisite to Safe Care Preventing "Indifferencity" to Enhance Patient Safety Continuous innovation is better than Continuous Improvement Innovations Should Start with Incidence Reports Hazard Analysis Fault Tree Analysis-the Best Tool for Harm Prevention Doing More with Less is Innovation Re-Invent Quality Management Human Errors may be Unpreventable, Preventing Harm is an Innovation Managing Safety: Lessons from Aerospace Protect Patients from Dangers in Medical Devices The Paradigm Pioneers Aequanimitas,The Best Known Strategy for Safe Care Who Will Benefit: Hospital senior management Hospital administrators Doctors Nursing staff Clinical engineers Radiology staff Infection control staff Patient advocates Speaker Profile Dev Raheja

Overview: Discussions, presentation, and webinars regarding HIPAA regulations are usually addressed from the perspective of what the regulations entail, the necessity of compliance with the regulations, and the consequences of willful neglect or non-compliance. This presentation addresses HIPAA regulations from a different perspective - from a personal perspective - from the perspective of the person in charge of moving an organization or facility toward full compliance with HIPAA. The by-product of this presentation will be both an understanding of, and a detailed job description for, a position mandated in the regulations - the HIPAA Security/Privacy Officer. Why should you attend: The HIPAA regulations are numerous, complicated, often vague, and affect every person working in a healthcare facility. Compliance with HIPAA will require a unique individual to lead the charge - an individual whose education, background, experience, and demonstrated skill sets offer the opportunity for that person to succeed in achieving the goals of that position. This is a new position to most healthcare facilities. So understanding who this person should be, what is required of the person with this job title, and with whom this person will interface is vital to every healthcare organization with the goal of achieving full compliance with HIPAA. Areas Covered in the Session: Position goals Position requirements (education, experience, skill sets, etc.) Position responsibilities Stay abreast of regulations Initiate compliance with HIPAA (according to regulations) Ensure continuous progress toward full compliance Develop appropriate security/privacy policies & procedures Oversee and deliver appropriate training programs to all employees Track compliance with HIPAA regulations at the facility & individual levels Track access to PHI Investigate and resolve HIPAA violations Apply sanctions to HIPAA violators Manage any information security personnel Prepare a department budget Hold Bu

Overview: This lesson will be going into great detail regarding you practice or business information technology and how it relates to the HIPAA Security Rule, in particular portable devices and personally owned devices. Areas covered will be texting, email, encryption, medical messaging, voice data and risk factors as they relate to IT. I will uncover myths versus reality as it relates to this very enigmatic law based on over 600 risk assessments performed as well as years of experience in dealing directly with the Office of Civil Rights HIPAA auditors. I will also speak to real life audits conducted by the Federal government (I've been on both sides of these audits) what your highest risks are for being fined (some of the risk factors may surprise you). In addition this course will cover the highest risk factors for being sued for wrongful disclosures of PHI and the manner in which patients are now using state laws to sue for wrongful disclosures.  Don't always believe what you read online about HIPAA, especially as it relates to encryption and IT, there are a lot of groups selling more than is necessarily required.  Why should you Attend: HIPAA NOW HAS TEETH! Be prepared for what's new in 2016! Protect your practice or business! What factors might spurn a HIPAA audit? …are you doing these things? Why are the Feds enforcing after all these years?  It is important to understand the new changes going on at Health and Human Services as it relates to enforcement of HIPAA for both covered entities and business associates as it relates to portable devices, texting, and emailing of PHI. You need to know how to avoid being low hanging in terms of audit risk as well as being sued by individuals who have had their PHI wrongfully discloses due to bad IT practices. I have also been expert witness on multiple court cases where a business or medical practice is being sued for not doing their due diligence to minimize risk.  Areas Covered in the Session: Update

Overview: Today's health care delivery occurs in a diverse, fast-changing, multidisciplinary health care environment. This often presents challenges to the health care professional that are not easy to navigate. Medical records and their confidentiality have long been the exclusive province of state law, but has now been recognized for some time in the federal HIPAA statutes and federal regulations. Differing and even conflicting sources of requirements at the state level still exist for the retention and disposition of medical records. These sources may vary based upon the specific health care practitioner - whether physicians, dentists, psychologists, or other health care providers, including mental health practitioners. As to the specific, individual health care practitioner, state laws mandate their confidentiality, retention, and even their specific content with regards to patient, clinical records. In addition to these clinical requirements, additional state laws set forth the content and retention of other types of records kept by the professional, such as supervisory agreements with other professionals subordinate to them as well as their own unique record content requirements. With the majority of medical records moving to an electronic format, special rules now exist with regard to the confidentiality, security, retention, and disposition of electronic medical records. This is particularly important as state laws continue to allow for and regulate the provision of telemedicine by various health care practitioners. For example, while psychotherapy and mental health services are ideal treatments to offer over the internet, that is, by simultaneous audio-visual transmission between the doctor and the patient, the risks of breaches of confidentiality also vastly increase. And when the successful doctor-patient relationship is over, how does the health care practitioner providing a mental health service dispose of these electronic records? In addit

Overview: One of the major requirements of the health care organization to be HIPAA compliant is to develop and implement a set of HIPAA privacy and security policies and procedures. This can be a daunting task for those not knowing where to start and what a set of HIPAA privacy and security policies and procedures should look like. For the cost conscious health care organization, the HIPAA policies and procedures can have multiple uses: first, they can become a basis for training the health care organization workforce; second, they can be used as a basis for conducting a HIPAA self-assessment; and third, they can be used to demonstrate due diligence should there be a breach or an externalHIPAA compliance audit. In today's world it is not necessary that the health care organization spend significant funds to develop a set of HIPAA privacy and security policies and procedures from scratch. The health care organization can likely find templates on the internet that can be used as a starting point to customize HIPAA policies and procedures to be unique for the health care organization. The preparation of a well-documented set of HIPAA policies and procedures needs to be addressed through the development of Privacy and Security policies and procedures that address each of the requirements shown in the HIPAA regulations as amended by the HITECH law and the final Omnibus Regulations. The process of developing the HIPAA privacy and security policies and procedures also provides a reference for the health care organization how to consider the security addressable and required regulation requirements. Why should you attend: There are three situations where having a set of HIPAA policies and procedures are needed: First, the policies and procedures become a good reference to ensure that all areas are addressed for becoming HIPAA compliant. Second, the HIPAA regulations REQUIRE covered entities and business associates to have a set of policies and procedures directing t