How to ensure your healthcare business is GDPR compliant
By now, all of us have heard of GDPR, but there is still some confusion as to what these new regulations actually mean. Here are the most effective ways you can ensure GDPR compliance in your business.
Brief the Senior Team
Whenever you want a new policy or set of regulations to be implemented across your business, you will need to get your senior team on board. It is through your most senior members of staff that your message will spread through your entire team. By making sure that all your senior staff understands what is involved in GDPR compliance, you will also be ensuring that your workers have somewhere to turn if they need guidance.
The most senior staff in your business will inevitably be overseeing your more junior workers. Therefore, if you communicate the requirements of GDPR clearly to your senior team, you can be confident that the necessary information with permeate through your business.
Implement Some General Training
If your most senior staff are informed of their obligations regarding GDPR, you shouldn’t have many problems relating to it. However, by also paying some attention to training your regular staff in how to remain compliant with GDPR, you will be maximizing the chances of compliance.
As well as making use of the myriad online resources that are available to help businesses train their staff in GDPR compliance, there also GDPR training courses you can send your healthcare workers on to bring them up to speed with the relevant know-how.
Consider Hiring a DPO
A data protection officer (DPO) is an individual who will take on responsibility for managing the data your business holds. The DPO should take responsibility for overseeing your GDPR implementations, as well as making sure that you are generally keeping any data you hold safe from potential intruders.
Your DPO should be prepared to oversee GDPR implementation. It is your DPO who should be available to workers who have questions that no one else can answer. The natural choice for your DPO will be the staff member who you feel has the best grasp on both the GDPR itself and best data protection practices more generally.
Make Sure Your Website is Up-to-date
GDPR extends to all areas of your business, but your website especially needs to be GDPR compliant. You should ensure that you have someone on staff who is able to tell you whether your website is GDPR compliant or not. For most websites, this will be a simple case of ensuring that they are obtaining clear and explicit consent from their users to collect their data. In some cases, more extensive changes might need to be made, but your consent forms and your terms & conditions are an excellent place to start.
Ensuring GDPR compliance is crucial for any business that wants to operate within the EU, or for any website that wants to receive traffic from the EU. Some big websites have had to temporarily suspend traffic from the region while they sort out their GDPR compliance. Don’t fall into this trap - make sure that you and your staff stay well ahead of the curve on GDRP.