HIPAA, short for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is a US federal law passed in 1996 that mandates all organizations that may have access to personal health information of Americans to implement standard practices that protect sensitive data such as their medical records. HIPAA compliance is a must have for both healthcare organizations as well as IT solutions providers who often work with electronic Protected Health Information. Not complying with HIPAA as a healthcare IT solutions provider could have severe repercussions in the form of financial penalties, legal trouble, & reputation damage.

How to ensure HIPAA compliance?

If you are a provider of healthcare IT services, you will need to ensure that your software meets all the requirements listed in HIPAA regulations. Here is a list of measures you may need to follow to make sure you are on the right track.

1 . Understand the type of data your healthcare software would be primarily working with as well as the risks associated with them. Conduct comprehensive risk assessment to identify and implement security controls. The main steps to risk assessment and analysis in HIPAA include:

  • data collection
  • accessing current security measures
  • determining the impact of potential threats and risk levels
  • finalizing this documentation for continuous evaluation

2. Ensure that the server you will be using to store any electronic Protected Health Information is HIPAA compliant. You might also need to sign a Business Associate Agreement with them to validate that. Fortunately, most reputed cloud storage servers such as GCP, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and more have attained HIPAA compliance.

3. Even though encryption has not been deemed mandatory for HIPAA compliance, it is generally a good practice to have it done to avoid potential breaches.

4. Data backup and disaster recovery are two important components of ensuring HIPAA compliance. You must back up data on a frequent basis, create multiple encrypted backup copies, facilitate real-time auditing solutions, and create a disaster management feature to tick all the checkboxes.

5. Get rid of old or useless ePHI permanently by exposing it to strong magnetic fields.

6. Consider access management features, such as unique user identification, emergency access to data, strong authentication, automatic log offs, and access monitoring to prevent unauthorized access.

7. Make sure you authenticate user accounts through passwords, certificates, biometrics, and tokens-based authentication methods.

8. Implement stringent security policies in the form of 2FA and multi-factor authentication, automatic session kills, encryption and decryption, intrusion detection, staff training on HIPAA and password security to ensure security and confidentiality of electronic Protected Health Information.

9. Make sure you have a remediation plan in place to address any potential breaches and limit their damage inducing capabilities. The plan needs to be capable of detecting causes and triggering automated kill process in case of an unpleasant event.

10. Monitor your HIPAA compliance measures continuously to be sure you are keeping up with the evolving and improving industry standards.

Achieve HIPAA Compliance by Partnering with the right healthcare IT solutions provider!

Ensuring HIPAA compliance without professional assistance can be tricky as it requires careful consideration of a plethora of factors. Partner with a reputed and experienced healthcare IT solutions provider to make sure no critical aspect goes unnoticed!

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