The GNYHA Foundation received a grant from the New York State Department of Health under the Health Workforce Retraining Initiative to develop a training program to address the administrative, technical, and physical security procedures necessary to ensure the confidentiality of protected health information.

GNYHA used a “train-the-trainer” model to provide workers with knowledge on HIPAA security principles and strategies and training on how to impart what they learned to workers within their own healthcare settings. The use of interactive role-plays and cases studies facilitated understanding of potential breaches in HIPAA privacy and security, and the capacity to formulate an adaptation plan to incorporate the new HIPAA rules into the facilities’ procedures

There were two sets of trainings in this project:

• First Series of Trainings
  The first series of trainings educated hospital and nursing home employees on the privacy and security issues of protected health information and provided them with an understanding of the effects of HIPAA within their specific roles and responsibilities.
  
  
• Second Series of Trainings
  The second series of training addressed how the privacy and security rules apply to the exchange of patient data.