How to Become a HIPAA Compliant Medical Office

This article describe how to become HIPAA compliant for medical offices and handlers of patient health information

This article provided as a public service. Bina Office Furniture is not responsible for its contents or your results.

Steps

1. Follow phone protocols. A medical offices must have specific guidelines for what information is given over the phone. Certain individuals like health insurance reps or family members might have clearance to be told patient information, but other callers should be given only basic information that does not violate HIPAA.
2. Protect workstations. A computer should always be locked when the person who uses it is away from the desk. This is to prevent unauthorized use.
3. Protect papers. Documents like medical claims and bills should be turned face down when the person who is responsible for them is away from the desk. The files must be kept in secure containers where they can't be read by someone passing by.
4. Use HIPAA compliant waste baskets and shredders. Some offices have color-coded trash bins, one set for regular trash like apple cores and gum wrappers, and another covered set of bins for documents. The documents that go in the secure bins get shredded every day. The other trash bins get emptied by cleaning people at night.
5. Educate. A well-informed staff will be more adept at following HIPAA regulations, and they'll know why they're doing it. Conversations about the laws are good, and help to get everybody on the same page.

Tips

• HIPAA will affect the way that your organization handles health care records, information, and transactions. Your organization will need to comply with the HIPAA security, privacy, and management requirements for electronic healthcare information. Healthcare organizations will be required to address the following four areas as defined by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS):
• Administrative procedures — Procedures for establishing and enforcing security policies
• Physical safeguards — Safeguards that protect physical computer and network facilities
• Technical security services — Services that protect,control, and monitor access to health care information
• Technical security mechanisms — Mechanisms for protecting information and restricting access to data transmitted over networks
• The entire service and product delivery cycle must become HIPAA aware and where needed, brought into compliance. Information and data security will need to become a priority throughout your organization. In order to satisfactorily comply with this Act, your organization will need to assess which areas are susceptible to electronic vulnerabilities and identify where your information management practices are inadequate. Your network, systems, procedures and appropriate personnel will require a comprehensive review. Your operation will need to undergo a thorough risk assessment. Although such a thorough analysis may seem extreme, it is necessary to establish a strong foundation from which your operation will be able to build areliable information security posture. Your management and technical teams will need to develop a comprehensive plan to become HIPAA compliant. In particular your organization will need to:
• Develop a course of action outlining detailed roles, responsibilities and time frames for HIPAA compliancy
  
• Determine the impact of the electronic healthcare information transactions and identifier standards on your organization
• Enable and adjust your organization's current environment to support standard HIPAA electronic transactions
  

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This article provided as a public service. Bina Office Furniture is not responsible for its contents or your results. Article adapted from wikiHow

Labels: HIPAA, medical file, medical office, patient file

This will hopefully help you to know where to put your furniture. The most important part is to first toss away the junk, move the bed and make sure there is nothing underneath it, and get ready to arrange.

Steps

1. Purpose

Determine what purpose the space the furniture occupies has and the purpose of each piece of furniture. This will have an effect on how space might be divided up and furniture arranged. Some furniture may not belong in a given space.

• Primary Conversation Area:
  • 8-12 feet in diameter is ideal
    
  • Seats 4-6 people
• Secondary Conversation Area:
  
  • Seating for just 1-3 people
• Conference Area:
  
  • Allow 3 feet from the table edge for the person to be seated at the table and room behind for traffic.
  • Each person is allowed a minimum of 24 inches of seating room at the table.

2. Measure

Measure the room and write down its dimensions. Do the same for your furniture. Make a flat scale drawing of the room using graph paper as if seen from above. (EXAMPLE: 1 little square represents one quarter of a square foot [3"] and four of those equal one square foot.) You may want to shade the floor close to what is already there (beige if the carpet is beige) if there is a need to coordinate colors -just make sure you can see the lines on your graph paper.

3. Draw Room

Draw flat scale drawings of your furniture as if seen from above. Don't get too detailed. At the very least you need the size and shape in relation to the room; Color the piece if you think it's important and then label it.

4. Space Design Guidelines

Consider the following traffic flow / spacing guidelines:

• Spaces that need 36"-6' clearance:
  • Hallways
    
  • In front of closets, file cabinets, and storage cabinets.
    
  • Any route where two people might pass each other
    
  • In front of counter or utility areas, e.g. photocopier, computer printer, fax machine.
  • From the edge of a conference room table to a wall or stationary object.
  • 4' or more for stairways.
    

• Spaces that need 18"-4'clearance:
  
  • Between sofas & coffee tables
    
  • 30" in routes where only one person will walk such as around private desk or through private doorways.
  • There should be at least 30" of clearance in front of utility areas.

5. Configure Room

Take your scale drawing of the room's floor plan and rearrange the scale drawn pieces of furniture on it until you see a configuration you like and think works best for the space and furniture's purposes and traffic flow. Tape the pieces down with small pieces of tape (so that you can easily move them if you change your mind) and begin preparing to move your furniture into that configuration.

6. Moving Furniture

You have two options for moving the furniture:

• Move everything out of the room

-OR-

• Move pieces little by little.

7. Options

Regardless of your above choice the following steps are applicable:

• Move the first piece to where you want it to go, and keep going from there.
• Move all the things outside your door back into your room.
  

Tips

• Clean the room before you move the furniture.
• Decide whether or not the furniture in the room should be kept. It should serve the room's purpose and be on the scale of the room -a small room should have small pieces of furniture and large room should have large pieces. If a large room cannot be filled with large pieces of furniture, divide the space up using the smaller pieces of furniture available arranged around / anchored by an area rug.
• Use a computer application such as Visio to help draw up your scale drawings.
• Area rugs not only work to bring color, texture and interest to a room but work as traffic flow guides and indications of transition from one area to another. Arrange furniture around or on top of area rugs. (A coffee table would be placed on top of an area rug, for example, and furniture arranged around that.)
• Clean the furniture before moving it back in place. It may be a long time before you bother to move that piece again for thorough cleaning.
  
• Vacuum or clean the floor afterwards.
• If you have wooden floors, put a piece of old carpet or a rag under each leg before you move an item of furniture; it will slide more easily and won't scratch the floor. Leave it there after you have finished to avoid damaging the floor.
• If you are moving pieces on carpet consider moving pads or placing pieces of cardboard or wood on the floor so that furniture slides more easily.

Warnings

• Do not move furniture in a messy room!
• Be careful and do not move anything that is too heavy for you!

This article provided as a public service. Bina Office Furniture is not responsible for its contents or your results. Article adapted from wikiHow

Labels: design, floor plan, furniture moving, office space

Draw a floor plan to scale for any room. Use cut out pieces of furniture at the same scale to plan various furniture layouts for the room. Decide on a layout before moving heavy pieces of furniture. Take the plan when shopping. The store design associate will help you decide on a new arrangement for furniture or counters.

Steps

1. Use a graph pad where each square on the paper equals one quarter of an inch (four squares equal one inch) or create your own grid of equal squares on a blank sheet of paper
   
2. Imagine each square represents one foot (12 inches)
   
3. Measure the length of one wall with the tape measure
   
4. Draw a line on the graph paper to represent this length of wall by counting the squares. For example: The wall is eight feet six inches long. Count out eight and a half squares.
   
5. Measure the length of each wall around the room
   
6. Measure the length of each door and window opening (without frames) from the corner of the closest wall and add to the drawing
   
7. Draw windows as double lines and doors with a line and an arc
   
8. Measure the length and widths of all built in fixtures such as counters and add to your plan
   
9. Measure the length and width of each piece of furniture for this room with the tape measure
   
10. Draw the furniture on another sheet of graph paper - the squares represent 12 inches
    
11. Cut out the individual pieces of furniture with scissors
    
12. Glue or tape the cut outs onto a piece of cardboard for weight
    
13. Move the cut out furniture around on your plan to decide on a suitable arrangement
    

Things You'll Need

• Paper - graph pad – 4 squares to an inch
  
• Tape measure 16 ft. or longer
  
• Sharp pencil
  
• Scissors
  
• Cardboard
  
• Glue stick or scotch tape
  

Sources and Citations

• Construction Drawing Plans
  
• Tips for Home Projects
  

Article provided by wikiHow

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