I've left two comments and deleted them both. For a lot of reasons, I feel like an idiot for wanting to weigh in here. Those include: no one takes me seriously, I get no respect, I'm compulsively helpful and it doesn't do a fucking thing for me because no one takes me seriously or thinks a woman has any right to make any goddamned money, so sharing what I know on HN absolutely never constitutes "networking" or "establishing a professional reputation for myself" or similar. Also, I'm short of sleep, running a fever and -- in case you can't tell! -- I'm in a really lousy mood.

In addition to my personal crap, I suspect a random question on the internet is not the best way to address this, never mind that it's HN. You are still trusting internet strangers to recommend a thing critical to your business that involves legal compliance.

But I worked at a Fortune 500 insurance giant for over five years. I had annual training in HIPAA, information security, fraud training and Gramm-Leach-Bliley (a different federal regulation that you may not be subject to -- it regulates financial services, like banking, and also applies to insurance). And, well, you aren't getting any good replies. So here I am for the third time.

First, you can't ignore HIPAA. It's a legal requirement, fines can potentially run into the millions and if they decide your handling of privacy is a criminal offense, you can even go to jail for it. (I imagine "Fuck this noise. I can't be bothered." would make it a criminal offense. Have fun with that.)

Having said that, my first-hand experience was that large hospitals had good awareness of HIPAA, but many small medical practices were pretty clueless. If you are a small fry, you may go unnoticed.

If you intend to be a "start up" and pursue rapid ("exponential") growth, absolutely do not act like this does not matter. You need to get this right to grow rapidly in a medical related space.

I no doubt had world class training, what with working at a mega Corp. Yet I routinely bitched to my sons about its shortcomings. I homeschooled them, so under California law I ran a two student private school for years. I also was Director of Community Life for The TAG Project and a low level presenter one year at a conference, probably Beyond IQ.

So I have a background in education and I felt the training sucked. If I ran the company, the annual training would have been done -- because I believe it's a requirement of compliance -- but there would have been much more emphasis on reinforcing best practices and awareness as part of the culture.

Some of my annual training involved an online course of like video and slides followed by a multiple choice quiz. It's a format aimed at proving compliance. But it's a lousy format for actually making sure employees know all this and do the right things consistently.

If I were the bitch in charge, there would be a checklist on the wall with the most common basic practices and every single shift would start with a huddle in front of that sign and a minute reminding people of best practices and why they matter. I would also have a handy reference manual where people could readily look up the key points covered in the annual training.

I think if you work with medical information daily, you ought to be able to pass a quiz on this stuff at the drop of a hat because you do it all day every day, not after your annual refresher course. But I've always had "unreasonable expectations," like actual competence.

However, much of the world literally insists I'm insane, so you are quite free to ignore my whacky opinions. Best of luck in getting an actual recommendation for a course.

(FWIW, I looked at the websites for the two courses you listed and I liked the demo on HIPAAtraining.com. But I know absolutely nothing about who does this well. The company I worked for probably did in house training and it's been several years since I worked there.)

I will add: if you have people making phone calls, they should get phone training. I had my job a few years before I got phone training. I absolutely hated making phone calls. Phone calls are a huge point of vulnerability. It's excessively easy to blurt out the wrong thing on the phone. Ugh.