Become Certified in Healthcare Compliance (CHC)

The Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) serves compliance professionals throughout the healthcare field. Our members include compliance officers and staff from a wide range of organizations, including hospitals, research facilities, clinics and technology service providers. HCCA is a member-based, non-profit organization.

If you work in healthcare compliance, you may want to consider becoming certified in Healthcare Compliance. More than 6,000 people actively hold at least one of the following compliance and ethics professional certifications, including an international certification for individuals who work outside the United States or those who have international affiliates.

Certified in Healthcare Compliance (CHC)
Certified in Healthcare Research Compliance (CHRC)
Certified in Healthcare Privacy Compliance (CHPC)
Certified in Healthcare Compliance Fellowship (CHC-F)
Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP)
Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional-International (CCEP-I)
Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional Fellowship (CCEP-F)

You can also attend the HCCA Managed Care Compliance Conference coming up next week in AZ:
February 9–11, 2014 | Scottsdale, AZ
The Westin Kierland Resort & Spa

Learn more here.

HIPAA 101 for Entrepreneurs

You may not know that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has a series of free health IT webinars that are available for free. One that caught my eye was titled, "HIPAA 101 for Entrepreneurs." Entrepreneurs who enter "Business Associates" agreements with health care organizations need to be aware of the HIPAA guidelines, so start with the basics.

Innovation Exchange: HIPAA 101 for Entrepreneurs
Speaker: Joy Pritts, Chief Privacy Officer, ONC
Moderator: Geoff Clapp, Co-Founder, Better

You can access that webinar here.
PDF of the slides here.

Physician privacy and online social networking websites

Physicians need their privacy. Some patients would be calling their physicians all the time if they had the mobile phone number. That's why so many physicians use answering services and they block caller ID when they're calling out to their patients.

How can physicians leverage social networking websites and maintain privacy? What's the right balance for physicians who are trying to transition into the world of non-clinical medicine?

I'm not a fair example. My first name (Joseph or Joe) is one of the most common names out there. My last name (Kim) is the most common Korean surname (and also happens to be a very common first name among women). So, when you search for a Joseph Kim or Joe Kim on LinkedIn, Facebook, or any other social networking site, you're likely to find many pages of results.

If you have a fairly common name, you may find that it's easy to network on these sites if you're using your name but you're not identifying yourself as a physician.

If you have a unique name, then you may choose to create an alias so that you can still use sites like LinkedIn and Facebook while maintaining anonymity (be creative and don't impersonate anyone). Of course, you wouldn't want to be anonymous to your friends, so you'd have to reach out to them and let them know what you're doing. This could get confusing for people. So, are there any other options?

Fortunately, many social networking sites provide many privacy options. Your name may not appear in any searches (so your patients won't find you). Your information may not be visible to anyone outside of your personal network. By leveraging these privacy options, you may be "invisible" to everyone who might be looking for you. However, it will give you a way to reach out to them and rebuild old relationships.

My recommendation is to create a profile and set all your privacy options to the "Max" level. Try it out, and then you may wish to ease up on the privacy settings after you leave the world of clinical medicine.