This episode is for commercial cleaning companies getting into healthcare facilities. In many cases these are private doctors’ offices, shared facilities where practice takes place. Your cleaning service may even be contracted at an urgent care facility. Let’s also consider dentist, dermatologists and medical records archives. All of these locations and healthcare related businesses service a huge volume of patients.

As such, the topic of HIPAA Compliance for those on the cleaning and janitorial staff is bound to arise. That makes sense. Especially when we consider the potential for front-line cleaners to be present while sensitive information is around. As it pertains to the cleaning industry, this is the most likely point of exposure. For the cleaning company owner, this is a critical point of training and preparing your staff. This is where you and your cleaning team need to have an iron-clad sense of trustworthiness.

But there is a cost for HIPAA

Most of the facility owners and your customers may not understand staff turnover. You know what the industry standard is. That means you are very likely to have another front line cleaner (or more) in any given facility before the end of a year. That means more training and more training costs. While pricing the project, we urge you to take that cost into your calculations.

Communicating the Impact to Your Customer

More often than not, the commercial cleaning industry can feel like a “race-to-zero”. Customers and those looking for service quotes bid out commercial cleaning. They ask where you can cut costs. They might even offer, “If you can work with me on this one, there’s another I can get you into.”

THAT’S TEMPTING – BE CAREFUL!

The person you’re dealing with on the client-side has a boss to answer to. Respect that they have a budget and accept that you do or do not “need” the work. We understand the goal of growing your commercial cleaning business while providing excellent services. What we’re also suggesting is that the prospect you’re speaking with has no idea of the complexities of delivering your services:

• Basic Training for your Cleaning Staff
• HIPAA training costs for your Cleaning Staff
• HIPAA Training their replacements based on turnover
• Business Insurance
• Unemployment Insurance
• Workers Comp
• Scheduling & Time Keeping for shift work
• Payroll

All of that goes into your services. When you and your cleaning team are well-trained, your work keeps everyone who enters that site safe. Safe from infections and illnesses that have a huge impact on the health of your clients’ business. And an equally huge impact on their families. Respect your clients’ request and respect yourself.

In this episode we’ll answer:

• 00:35 What is HIPAA
• 01:36 Who on the cleaning team needs to be HIPAA compliant?
• 01:50 Does everyone in the cleaning company need to be HIPPA compliant?
• 02:57 Is HIPAA compliance for commercial cleaning likely to increase costs to the customer?
• 03:38 What should cleaning-company owners be aware of regarding HIPPA compliance?
• 04:07 Are some parts of HIPAA compliance negotiable for cleaning companies?
• 04:13 How does employee turnover impact HIPAA compliance and costs?

 

00:23 Ray

Joel, we’re back, and we’re talking about HIPAA compliance. I’m familiar with this in dealing with doctors’ offices, general record keeping, but I’m not quite certain I understand how it relates to commercial cleaning.

 

00:35 Joel

Nobody understands how it relates to commercial cleaning. Hold on. Here, let me tell you how it relates. The HIPAA, which a lot of people say, well, what does it stand for? It stands for the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act of 1996. The CliffsNotes version means somebody might have a computer screen on and you see their medical records. You may see a medical file open on somebody’s desk. You might see somebody sitting in the waiting area, but you don’t know anything. I don’t care if it’s your next-door neighbor, your best friend. You do not act as though you know the individual sitting in the waiting area. A lot of medical centers and hospitals, which is where this is directed towards, will say, well, anybody who comes in has to be HIPAA compliant. Well, yes and no. So, the delivery carrier that comes in to deliver their water, and the water-cooler is either in a break area or out in front of the reception area. How much contact would they actually have with those types of situations? They might need to be HIPAA aware which is completely different than HIPAA compliant, because HIPAA compliance is a training program with a test.

 

01:36 Joel

The custodial staff that comes in maybe in the evening, they need to be HIPAA compliant. They need to sit down and they need to take the testing.

 

01:43 Ray

Because there’s every reason to believe that they could potentially see an open file, a live computer screen. (Correct) Okay.

 

01:50 Joel

Those are the types of things of what it is geared to helping to protect, and it’s to protect our medical information. (Okay.)  So if I happen to go in that day and I had a medical a procedure or I had a check of it, something sitting on that screen and somebody saw something and they knew who I was and they started saying, Oh, my God, did you know that Joel, the Doc? (He’s getting a nose job?( Yeah. Yes. Getting a nose job that they can’t talk about that. So the opportunity to see that is a lot higher with somebody who’s scheduled to be in there cleaning from the hours of 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM. (Sure, I get that.) But the person bringing in the water or a supervisor that may be walking through once a week or a manager walking through once a month or something like that, it’s so much less. So, we’re in an industry where everybody says that our prices are too high. If we had to literally have everybody tested from the frontline employee right on up to the owner of the company because they might walk through the facility.

 

02:48 Joel

It’s a lot different. We can talk about the things, like I said early on, the CliftNotes version, use those types of things and say, Okay, I’m aware, and you sign off on it because you’re not there that long.

 

02:57 Ray

So, for the client who is purchasing the cleaning services, who thinks that everyone on staff that might enter their facility needs to be HIPAA compliant, the question that they don’t understand they’re asking is, “How much is this going to cost me?” Because to have everyone trained is a costly process. It’s a time-consuming process.

 

03:16 Joel

Correct. You have to be present because the way that the programs run is that they ask questions during the presentation so that you can’t be off listening to it on a computer screen. You literally have to be in front of the screen and answering questions.

 

03:30 Ray

Actively engaged.

 

03:31 Joel

You have to be actively engaged. That’s a great way of putting it. You have to be actively engaged in answering the questions within so many seconds of it popping up on the screen, even if you’re wrong.

 

03:38 Ray

For the cleaning company owner who’s receiving these questions, they might be answering, Sure, we’ll get that taken care of for you, not understanding that they have vastly increased their cost to service this customer. It doesn’t mean they can’t, but- Correct.

 

03:51 Joel

They could be ultra-safe and make sure that everybody is, but there’s that cost. That cost usually is going to be passed on to the customer because you don’t need You don’t need that at the law firm down the street. You don’t need that at the bank. You don’t need that at the warehouse that you clean.

 

04:07 Ray

That might actually become a negotiation point in performing services written into the service agreement.

 

04:13 Joel

Correct. If the janitorial contractor owner realizes, Okay, I need two people. My turnover percentage is 400 % a year. They factor that in for those two people, but they should be looking more for just compliance factor for the owner, the manager, the project crew that might be in the shampoo carpets once a year, things like that. Those individuals aren’t going to necessarily need the full-fledged training, just the people that are going to be in there on a daily or a weekly basis to do the actual cleaning. And just because you’re the owner and you’re a smaller company and you’re cleaning a medical center doesn’t mean that you then have to be compliant. So you, the owner, will have to take the test in order to be compliant because you just don’t get a free pass because you’re the owner.

 

04:56 Ray

Critical details, Joel. Thank you.

 

04:57 Joel

You’re welcome.