Why HIPAA Training Doesn’t Work. And How To Fix It

The opportunity to rethink HIPAA training and manage risk in the flow of work lies in delivering real-time contextual training, in...

With changes in how we work, whether you are a clinician or a data scientist, the need to rethink how we train employees to protect PHI has never been greater. This approach to training is checking the box on HIPAA requirements. But, what does this approach say to employees about the importance of following HIPAA? What’s more, if you spend time with employees at healthcare companies, especially employees on the engineering side, you will have encounters with employees who want to follow HIPAA in their day-to-day work but don’t know how. The actions employees take in the flow of work, in their workflows, have a huge impact on the security and privacy of data. The opportunity to rethink HIPAA training and manage risk in the flow of work lies in delivering real-time contextual training, in whatever format (tips, nudges, reinforcement, questions, videos, etc.), based on triggers in the applications themselves. – Integrating HIPAA into the flow of work bakes privacy and security into culture; Current approaches to HIPAA training, done annually, do not get in the way of day-to-day work but also do not empower employees to better manage their responsibilities and to reduce the growing risk to companies from employee actions in the flow of work. Intelligent, real-time training in the flow of work is an opportunity to make following HIPAA easy for employees.