If you have not yet signed up to receive an email notification when I post something new, please do so. And please post your comments, questions, and concerns. As I mentioned in my previous posting, I plan to post at least weekly and more often as events occur, as the law changes, and as you post your comments, questions, and concerns.

As I travel around the country giving HIPAA seminars to hundreds of people involved with HIPAA compliance, a common question from my audiences is “Jon, how can we keep up with all the changes to HIPAA and the constantly evolving risks to health information?” I can certainly sympathize with them because all I do is HIPAA compliance and it’s hard for me to keep up. But the Director of Health Information Management and Privacy Officer has to manage her department, hassle the medical staff about completing their charts on time, deal with subpoenas and other requests for medical records, ride herd over the transcriptionists, and the like. Where does she or other equally busy office managers, sole practitioner clinicians with virtually no support staff, or other busy health care professionals find time to keep up with HIPAA? And in this economy with cuts and delays in government reimbursement, how can those responsible for HIPAA compliance find the resources to stay compliant in a cost-effective manner?

Certainly, thousands of sources of information on HIPAA exist. A Google search for the word “HIPAA” brought up 7,100,000 documents. But who has time to wade through them? Probably half of them are advertisements from various vendors offering compliance tools, HIPAA-compliant electronic health records, and the like. There is even a HIPAA blog at http://hipaablog.blogspot.com/, which provides daily HIPAA related news. But I haven’t found a good source that really puts it all together in the down, dirty, and understandable way that I strive to do at my seminars.

So I wanted to start this blog as another way to help you stay current and HIPAA compliant. Please let me know how I can improve it to help you even more. Thanks.