Why should your business be HIPAA-compliant?

HIPAA stands for ‘Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act’. Staying compliant with this legislation enhances the security and privacy of your PHI (Protected Health Information). It specifies how healthcare companies should handle your data. It even states how they should safeguard your health information. You can derive the standards to access, manage, and store PHI data at all times.

About PHI

PHI is sensitive data that needs careful handling. It includes the following:

• Conversations between you, medical staff, and your doctor associated with your health.
• Conversations between you and your insurance provider or your health provider.
• Billing records are maintained at the healthcare provider’s office.
• All medical records, including MRI scan or blood test results.

Who should comply with HIPAA?

Initially, insurance providers, hospitals, and doctors, were subjected to meeting HIPAA Security and Privacy Compliance. They were those with PHI access and called ‘Covered Entities’. It even includes all organizations providing healthcare operations, payment, and treatment. Covered entities include hospitals, doctors, their clinics, HMOs, insurance companies, and pharmacies. However, an update in 2013 included cloud and outsourcing healthcare providers.

What does it require?

• To ensure staying HIPAA law compliant, hire the best HIPAA Compliance Consultant. They ensure the covered entity should do four things.
• Restrict PHI data access to those requiring it to accomplish a specific purpose.
• Ensure PHI data remains protected all the time.
• Implement stringent policies and procedures to limit PHI data access.
• Users and employees should be offered training on data privacy and security.
• BAAs (Business Associate Agreements) should be in place to enhance PHI data security.

HIPAA security rule

HIPAA imposes four rules, namely, Privacy, Security, Breach, and Enforcement Notification. Developers should know these rules. SaaS companies eager to work with business associations, medical organizations, or healthcare providers should seek HIPAA Certification Consultancy Services. The experts will ensure your service or app controls PHI data. With technical safeguards in place, it becomes easier to control data access.

Things to know

• Audit controls: Proper mechanisms should be in place. It ensures individual access to the system is recorded and examined.
• Access control: Proper procedures and policies should be implemented to prevent unauthorized users from accessing sensitive PHI data.
• Transmission security: Adequate security measures need to be adopted to prevent unauthorized PHI access since it gets transferred over the network.
• Integrity controls: PHI data should not be destroyed or altered improperly. With proper procedures in place, the auditors can confirm its occurrence.

Tap new customer bases

Health & Wearables technologies: The latter need not be HIPAA compliant. These days, people use apps and wearables to share personal health data. Hence, such companies should be HIPAA-compliant.

Covered entities: Approximately, 60% of hospitals and 80% of physicians use HER (electronic health records). Such companies should adhere to HIPAA regulations for using cloud services.

Benefits of HIPAA Compliance

Adhering to HIPAA standards helps gain new customers quickly. SaaS service is currently adopted by over 67% of healthcare companies in their workflow. The majority consider SaaS to be the future of their organization. Implementing HIPAA standards allows your business to beat competitors and enhance your revenue prospects. Hence, select the top consultant who will ensure your business is HIPAA-compliant.

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