In any large health care organization, the position of a HIPAA Privacy Officer will require support of some staff just manage all these administrative tasks and in a small clinic HIPAA privacy officer's responsibilities will involve only a part of a person's job responsibilities. In some parts of the economy, like banking & finance, the HIPAA privacy officer is more of a senior manager. Yet in health care sector, these responsibilities are attended to by a middle level manager, even in large facilities.

Typically, a privacy officer is someone having (or can develop) sound knowledge of  HIPAA's privacy requirements  as well as conversant with state law, one who has a clinical care background or experience in PHI management as well as comfortable in implementing information technology, compliance and risk management. Yet  from the practical point of view very few people have the required skills or knowledge whether its a large facility or a small clinic, chances being lesser in the latter. Hence the responsibilities are assigned to an employee who is willing to be a jack of all trades.

To make the work for the HIPAA Privacy officer easier the entire concern can aim to follow the simple steps of HIPAA compliance rather than expecting an officer to monitor them at every step of administration. Hence if the internal staff is trained and inspired to follow the compliance tasks, work becomes simpler and there is no radical change in the process of the organization.

To sum up these are some of the responsibilities of a HIPAA Privacy Officer:

To develop and implement a document on HIPAA Security and Privacy and also a privacy notice for the customers AS TO HOW THE PARTICULAR HEALTHCARE CONCERN STRIVES TO PROTECT THE health records information through HIPAA standards

A detailed documentation of all the steps of privacy and training of employees and also the complaints on breaches which have been received in the last 6 years have to be maintained. The Privacy officer is solely responsible for documenting this information.

The Privacy officer has a twofold task of maintaining public contact by informing the consumers as well as noting the conflicts and resolving them.

The responsibilities also vary with the size of the concern. While small healthcare entities can have a single person, larger organizations might have to set up an entire department  depending on the work.