How the Compliance Department Can Meet HIPAA Privacy Obligations
Four out of five healthcare organizations have now moved HIPAA Privacy under the compliance department. This shift has real implications: more responsibility, the same resources and a higher bar from OCR, which collected nearly $10 million in settlements and civil monetary penalties in 2024 alone.1
When compliance and privacy land on the same desk, three challenges follow.
- Talent gaps: Qualified Privacy Officers are hard to recruit. When the role goes vacant, privacy responsibilities fall to whoever is available, and the organization’s exposure grows.
- Work overload: Compliance is already a full-time job. Adding privacy means something gets shortchanged, usually privacy.
- Resource shortages: A single HIPAA policy takes four to six hours to research and draft. Without the right tools and support, the work stalls or doesn’t get done.
This whitepaper examines each challenge and lays out a practical framework for addressing them: when to bring in outside expertise, how to scope the engagement, and how to structure it to fit your budget and workplan.
