Most Common Challenges When Implementing HIPAA Training

Organizations face several common challenges when implementing HIPAA training:

1. Training Effectiveness: Ensuring that HIPAA training is effective and engaging can be challenging. HIPAA is complicated, and it is easy to present it in a way that is dry and overly lengthy.  HIPAA training need not be long. Many training programs are bloated with unnecessary information that detracts from what is essential and wastes valuable time. Training should cut to the core and focus on practical and relevant information. HIPAA training works best when created by experts who know how OCR enforces HIPAA and who understand the most common areas of HIPAA non-compliance and confusion. Skimping on the expertise and using a long generic HIPAA training course written by a non-expert often will not be effective. On the flip side, HIPAA training written by law firm attorneys can often be quite technical and is better suited for personnel implementing HIPAA rather than the lay workforce.
2. Administrative Challenges: HIPAA training must be effectively rolled out within an organization. Everyone who handles PHI must be trained, and getting everyone to take the training can be quite a challenge. Incentives can work, such as encouragement, prizes, and praise — and sometimes, stronger more punitive measures can be used. One thing that helps most with encouraging people to complete their HIPAA training is to make it short and engaging. The more painless (and even enjoyable) the training is, the more people will embrace it.
3. Cultural Challenges: Creating a culture of compliance within an organization is crucial. Employees must understand the importance of HIPAA regulations and be motivated to adhere to them. This often involves overcoming resistance to change and ensuring that all staff members, from top management to frontline workers, are committed to compliance.
4. Resource Allocation: Good HIPAA training takes time to create or a budget to license. It might seem easy and cheap to use free HIPAA training included with some platforms or try to do it yourself, but there are hidden costs. With much of the “free” HIPAA training, you get what you pay for – the training is so long that it ironically costs more in terms of lost time of the workforce and lack of effectiveness.  Creating HIPAA training oneself can be incredibly time-consuming, taking much more time than estimated. We’re biased, of course, but we believe that using an external training provider with real expertise about HIPAA and about teaching is well worth the expense. We are steeped in HIPAA; we follow new developments with HIPAA; we follow HIPAA enforcement actions; and we have learned from hundreds of HIPAA privacy officials throughout the years.  We have collected engaging imagery, and we know how to teach to make a subject come alive. Just as you wouldn’t try to do brain surgery yourself or find some random person on the street to do it, we suggest that you think of HIPAA training in a similar way.  We’ve been providing HIPAA training for 15 years, and we’ve learned a lot from feedback and the constant study of HIPAA.  Budgets can be tight, but spending money on HIPAA training is well worth it. We encourage you to reach out to us for HIPAA training; our pricing is quite reasonable, and you’ll love our short and engaging courses (we have many different versions to choose from).

Since its founding by Professor Daniel J. Solove in 2010, TeachPrivacy has provided training for hundreds of organizations, boutique to Fortune 500, both nationwide and globally. A leading international expert in privacy law, Solove is a law professor at George Washington University Law School, has authored more than 10 books and more than 50 articles, as well as given lectures around the world. His LinkedIn blog has more than 1 million followers. Click here for more information about Professor Solove.