Global Health, Fitness and Medical Issues

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was created in 1996 to modernize the flow of healthcare information. It stipulates how all personal data maintained by the healthcare and healthcare insurance industries should be protected from fraud and theft. It also addresses limitations on healthcare insurance coverage.

 

All healthcare and healthcare insurance industries are required to comply with HIPAA guidelines and can expect to be audited by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), an organization within the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).

 

HIPAA compliance should be taken very seriously, as violations can carry civil or even criminal penalties, not to mention the huge impact a data breach has on a company’s credibility.

Here are a few tips to help you make this process as simple and as smooth as possible.

Update your policies

Technology has changed tremendously since 1996 and this led to an adjustment of HIPAA guidelines in 2013.

 

Now, 7 years later, data storage and data security protocols are still undergoing massive changes, so it is important to keep your policies up to date. Implementing small changes every year is significantly less costly than waiting to implement huge changes when they are inevitable.

Check for compliance with partners

It is important to remember that auditors will be looking for compliance not only within your organization, but also with any partner you work with. This applies to any business associate of yours that has access to or may come in contact with patients’ personal data.

 

Some examples are lawyers, accountants, IT contractors, billing companies, cloud storage services, receptionists, etc. So make sure you check that all your business associates are compliant with HIPAA and that they maintain that status as well.

Educate employees

Employee education and constant training is a big part of ensuring that your company is HIPAA compliant.

 

The best way to go about this is to have a plan in place on how you want to approach this training, keeping in mind that this will need to be an ongoing situation. The most important thing is to make sure that employees know how to keep data protected.

Assign a security officer

It is a great idea to assign an employee to be the security officer in charge of your HIPAA compliance program.

 

This will help you stay compliant and they are also critical whenever your company gets audited or you suffer from a data breach since they will be responsible for calling any third-party vendors to help you solve your issue.

Track data

From the moment an employee captures personal data, up until it is stored in a local or virtual server, you should take the necessary steps to ensure that this data is protected at all times. Auditing the path the data takes makes it easier to identify and eliminate all weak points that are vulnerable to breaches.

 

The first step is to implement a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that ensures that all communication within your network is encrypted and secure.

 

Other measures to keep in mind are encrypting all communication that happens outside of your secure network, this means all billing communications, emails, instant messages, and even fax machines must be protected. Testing the robustness of your security is a must to ensure that data is safe.

Learn to recognize a breach

Any time protected information falls into the hands of an unintended, not necessarily malicious, party constitutes a breach. Even if this data is encrypted and useless for anyone without the proper decryption keys, this is still a breach and it should be documented as such and the reason why it occurred should be addressed immediately.

 

This is where having all your policies and procedures up to date will help everybody know exactly what to do once a breach is identified.

Have an action plan 

Having a plan that details how all breaches are reported to your HIPAA security officer is required by the HIPAA Security Rule. So make sure everybody knows how to report breaches immediately after finding any.

Consolidate all data storage

There are many ways of storing sensitive data, from paper to removable usb drives and beyond, and all this information can be hard to keep in one place. That is why it is important to consolidate all data storage in order to make it easier for you to ensure that all of it is safe.

Stay compliant

Once you are fully compliant with HIPAA guidelines, it is a great idea to form a compliance committee that meets periodically (generally once each quarter) to ensure that you stay compliant.

 

It is clear that HIPAA guidelines are important to consider when hiring an external service, such as a live receptionist service to make sure all of your business calls are answered in a professional way, schedule appointments on your behalf, and protect your time from pesky robot calls or solicitors.

 

When you hire phone.com’s live receptionist services you can rest assured that all of our live receptionists are HIPAA compliant.

As more organizations continue to work remotely, they are relying on texting and email as means of communication.

 

For organizations that work in healthcare, it is important to determine if the communication tool they use is HIPAA compliant. HIPAA compliant texting and email are discussed below.

HIPAA Compliant Texting and Email: What You Need to Know

An essential component of HIPAA is ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of protected health information (PHI). This includes PHI communicated via texting and email.

 

For HIPAA compliant texting and email, there are certain measures that must be implemented.

 

HIPAA Compliant Texting. 

 

Traditional texting platforms are not HIPAA compliant as they cannot be encrypted. Encryption masks sensitive data so that it is unreadable to unauthorized users. As such, they cannot be used in conjunction with PHI.

 

Traditional texting platforms can only be used for patient communication with prior authorization from the patient. In addition to written consent, the covered entity (CE) must issue a warning to the patient to let them know that text messaging is not a secure form of communication, the warning must also be documented.

 

However, this authorization extends to provider and patient communication, the provider may not communicate PHI through text message to a party other than the patient. Text messaging can also be used to send patient appointment reminders and under certain circumstances, during a natural disaster. 

 

If your organization prefers to communicate PHI through text messaging, there are HIPAA compliant texting platforms. These platforms are specially designed for the medical field. As such, they include all of the required security measures, and they are willing to sign a business associate agreement (BAA).

 

 HIPAA Compliant Email. 

 

To use email for communication in compliance with HIPAA, the email provider must enable encryption.

 

When sending email attachments with PHI, the attachments must also be encrypted. However, PHI cannot be contained in an email subject line, as this information cannot be encrypted. Before using email to communicate PHI, you must have a signed BAA with your email provider.

 

Even with encryption enabled, using email to communicate PHI still poses a risk. This is why providers must receive patient authorization and issue a warning before using email to communicate PHI to a patient.