Privacy strategies, whether through manual reactive audits or proactive monitoring, are essential for preventing breaches that could jeopardize patient confidentiality and harm organizations. By staying ahead of potential risks, organizations can avoid devastating consequences. To uphold best practices in privacy management, every Privacy Officer should focus on three key principles to safeguard their organization effectively.
True auditing goes far beyond filtering
While filters seem like an easy way to detect possible privacy violations, this just isn’t the case. Filters are unforgiving and can actually remove instances that are true privacy violations while elevating incidents that are false positives – increasing workload while missing true threats to the organization. Privacy offices need the ability to audit every single access to patient data, reducing false positives, and only elevating true threats that need immediate attention.
Audit every access to patient data
One of the best things Privacy Officers can do to ensure patient privacy is audit every single access to patient data. It’s not impossible and actually quite easy when using proactive privacy monitoring technology. Privacy Officers no longer have to struggle to determine where to focus their limited resources, the work is done for them. Overworked staff no longer need to be experts in writing reports or wading through a sea of false positives, spreadsheets and reports. When an alert is generated, the team has everything they need to know to immediately resolve the case.
Machine Learning allows you to get back to top priorities
The bottom line is that machine learning has the ability to change the way the Privacy Officers currently identify and resolve inappropriate activity within the EHR. It’s not just about identifying the “bad guys,” it’s about identifying what normal behavior looks like for every individual within the organization and detecting when behavior deviates from the norm. The most impressive thing about machine learning powered privacy monitoring platforms is that it is always learning. All the necessary information for case resolution is provided on one dashboard, working as an intelligent companion to privacy officers, providing increased efficiency, cost savings, and the time and ability to focus on top priorities within the organization.