Five Most Popular Compliance Blog Posts Published in 2018 by HealthStream

April 1, 2021
April 1, 2021
To wrap up the HealthStream Blog for the year, we did some research about our most

popular blog posts. Of those published in 2018, these are the five most popular focused on healthcare compliance.

Healthcare Compliance Faces a Complicated Future

As the healthcare landscape continues to shift and evolve, the role of its compliance professionals will be adapting and changing as well. For instance, as healthcare moves away from being entirely hospital based, care types and payment structures will take up more and more of their time. That’s the perspective of Sheryl Vacca, Senior Vice President and Chief Risk Officer at Providence St. Joseph Health, a $24-billion company with 130,000 caregivers in seven states. Vacca, who began her healthcare career as a nurse at the bedside, now handles oversight for compliance, audit, risk management, and information security.

Five Key Findings about Privacy and Security Awareness in the Healthcare Industry

Hospitals and other healthcare organizations have proven nearly irresistible to cybercriminals in recent years. The 2017 Verizon Enterprises Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that 72% of malware incidents impacting the healthcare industry involved ransomware. The 2017 DBIR also found that human mistakes accounted for 80% of the breaches in the healthcare industry. We think a deeper understanding of the average healthcare employee’s knowledge of cybersecurity and data privacy best practices is warranted, given that staff must make sure patients’ protected health information (PHI) and other sensitive data is kept secure. This guest blog post comes from our partner MediaPro, a learning services company that specializes in the areas of information security, data privacy, compliance, and custom online courseware.

Nine Guidelines for Successfully Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims

How an organization goes about investigating a claim of sexual harassment is extremely important and can lead to better outcomes when an incident occurs. Advice for successful investigations was included in the recent HCCS webinar, “Preventing Sexual Harassment: The Importance of Workplace Training.” Attendees learned from business and employment law attorney Jennifer Kearns, a partner at Duane Morris, who discussed how a formal, comprehensive training program on preventing sexual harassment in the workplace can help protect business leaders, their employees, and their organizations. Kearns offered the following suggestions

Creating a Sexual Harassment Prevention Program: Best Practices

Given the national climate and the widespread impact of the #metoo movement, creating a sexual harassment prevention program has never been as important as at this moment. Here are some best practices for a harassment prevention program initiative, taken from the recent webinar offered by HCCS, a HealthStream Company—“Preventing Sexual Harassment: The Importance of Workplace Training.” Attendees learned from business and employment law attorney Jennifer Kearns, a partner at Duane Morris, what is involved in creating a strong sexual harassment prevention program.

Empowering Healthcare Providers to Identify Victims of Human Trafficking

If a person comes into the ER for a drug overdose, the doctor refers that patient to rehab services. If a person comes in after attempting suicide, the doctor refers them to psychiatric care. We expect our medical staff to identify the underlying causes of our ailments, give us the information we need to make informed decisions about our health, and help us access the treatment and services we need. And we expect healthcare settings to be a safe place to discuss our needs. But what happens if the problem isn’t obvious? What if the patient is a victim of human trafficking who experienced physical assault, an occupational injury, or sexual assault, but their trafficker told them that if they said anything to anyone their family would be hurt? If medical professionals don’t know what to look for, that patient could walk right out the door and back into their trafficking situation. This guest blog post comes from Polaris, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting and preventing human trafficking.