4 Big Benefits to Outsourcing HIPAA Compliance Assessments

As you may remember, when Tom Sawyer was asked to paint a fence, he ended up outsourcing the job and even got his chosen “vendors” to pay him for the privilege. What was an assigned chore ended up being done by others and turning a profit for Tom.

Now, while your HIPAA auditors won’t pay you for the privilege in the same way, there are a few reasons why you should engage a third party to perform your HIPAA compliance review even though you do have the option to conduct said review internally.

HIPAA compliance is challenging, and though many covered entities and business associates attempt to tackle HIPAA compliance on their own, many don’t realize how many components make up an effective compliance program.

We previously wrote about why you should perform regular and thorough HIPAA compliance assessments annually, but now we need to talk about how outsourcing that assessment can help you achieve compliance more easily. As one of the firms you may choose to contract for this work, we’re going to detail some of the ways bringing in an external assessor can simplify your ongoing HIPAA journey.

4 Reasons to Invest in an External HIPAA Audit

As we mentioned, organizations may find it complicated to determine what the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requires since HIPAA requirements only provide guidance on a high level. Without specific tactics on how to achieve compliance, much is left to interpretation, and that can cause problems (or even violations).

To avoid pitfalls, you should conduct a thorough examination of your HIPAA compliance practices and determine if any gaps or security vulnerabilities exist. And while it is an added expense, to be sure, here are four good reasons why you should consider bringing an external HIPAA assessor to perform that examination.

1. Impartial and Independent Expertise

You may already know that you have the option to conduct HIPAA compliance reviews internally but consider this: internal audit teams often struggle with bias. It’s not intentional, but many professionals do find it challenging to assess their own organization from a place of neutrality, and some may not be able to easily identify vulnerabilities in their own work—this becomes even more of a challenge for smaller organizations without a dedicated compliance team.

Conversely, you and your customers would be more confident in the objectivity of a completely independent and external HIPAA auditor that can identify critical issues that you may not have discovered on your own.

During an internal review, you may worry more that the designated staff will accidentally or purposely overlook something during your compliance assessment. But your external HIPAA auditors would be experts, and because they review healthcare organizations against the regulations more often than your personnel does, they are more familiar with common mistakes made and can help you determine what you still need to become HIPAA compliant—they’ll provide all the information you need, then leave you to decide what to do with it.

Once your people more thoroughly understand the guidelines for which your organization is accountable—thanks to that guidance from your contracted HIPAA experts—you can better ensure that you meet them while building a stronger privacy and security program.

2. Well-Documented Reporting 

In that same vein, when you contract an external auditor to perform your assessment, they’ll provide a HIPAA report that paints an overall picture for your executive management and organization with documentation of your compliance efforts as well as the status of your organization.

When it comes to security, you understand that consumers have higher expectations than ever before—it’s no longer enough to just say that a product or service is secure. Now, customers often need to see proof as validated by an independent third party, and a thorough HIPAA compliance report could serve to satisfy your partners, business associates, and customers regarding your information security.

3. Guidance During Your Self-Audit

In perhaps one of its clearest mandates, HIPAA separately requires healthcare organizations to conduct self-audits to assess their current privacy, security, and breach notification practices against HIPAA standards—although you can complete these without guidance, it is difficult to do so.

We’ve established that HIPAA compliance requires a continuous and thorough evaluation of your capability to comply with the requirements and address changes—just like your external auditor would cover any potential blind spots in your compliance assessment, they could also help guide you throughout your self-audit to ensure you catch as many gaps as possible.

4. Better Preparedness

For those needing to comply with HIPAA, you know that not only do you need to assess yourself/be assessed periodically, but the OCR can also audit you at any time.

One of the ways healthcare organizations can ensure they will successfully pass an OCR audit is to assess their systems, policies, and procedures in the same way the OCR would—in that, an external organization can help, playing the part of the OCR.

Taking such a path for your HIPAA compliance assessment process will bolster your preparation should an OCR audit ever occur, and you’d likely feel more secure about your organization’s HIPAA compliance posture as well.

Moreover, you should now that under the HIPAA Safe Harbor Law—an amendment enacted in January 2021 to the HITECH Act—the OCR has more flexibility on the fines that it metes out if the organization being audited can show that they had an implemented and recognized security framework in place. The documentation as a result of a HIPAA compliance assessment performed by an external assessor could be provided to the OCR to show this.

BONUS: Stand Out in the Market: A Benefit For Business Associates

All the previous benefits were geared toward healthcare organizations; however, an external HIPAA compliance assessment could serve (your) business associates too.

That’s because, for healthcare entities, business associate management is a key component of HIPAA compliance. Your business associates’ vulnerabilities are ultimately your responsibility, and it can be difficult to find HIPAA-compliant vendors.

But if you are a business associate, an external HIPAA compliance assessment is vital in showing your healthcare partners that you take HIPAA compliance and the security of their patient information seriously. Not all business associates do this, so it would make a great differentiator for an organization attempting to stand out.

Choosing the Right HIPAA Compliance Solution

If you’ve ever visited the HHS site, you’re aware that implementation standards for HIPAA can be vague and frustrating. But outsourcing your HIPAA compliance assessment to an external auditor allows healthcare organizations to become HIPAA compliant with the help of a HIPAA expert that can provide specificity to the implementation standards and removing the frustration. Just like it was for Tom Sawyer, it might also be the right option for you.

Now that you understand the different benefits of performing an external HIPAA assessment, you may be in the market for an external HIPAA partner, but it’s also important to choose the right one—you’ll first need to determine the protocols that your specific company needs to achieve compliance before finding an auditor whose skills and experience in HIPAA compliance audits align with your determinations.

In getting started with that, you may find that our HIPAA Express service—a shorter, more focused assessment that reviews your current HIPAA compliance posture with HIPAA and OCR audit protocols—may be the right first step. If you’re interested in learning more, please feel free to contact us.

Otherwise, check out our other HIPAA-related content that could further simplify your efforts to comply with this regulation:

• 8 Things Healthcare Organizations Can Do to Ensure HIPAA Compliance in the Cloud
• How to Prepare for a HIPAA Assessment: A Guide for Healthcare Organizations
• Best Practices for Conducting HIPAA Risk Assessments