HIPAA COMPLIANCE CONSULTING FOR HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS

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HIPAA Compliance

HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. It is United States legislation which acts on implementing data privacy and security measures to safeguard medical information. This act is especially important because of the increase in health data breaches from cyber attacks. The fundamental goal of HIPAA is to make it easier to maintain health insurance, and ensure confidentiality and security of healthcare information.

  • In case of HIPAA Compliance, the Office for Civil Rights- OCR from the Department of Health and Human Services- HHS is the governing body. HIPAA exists for individuals and professionals. You require HIPAA compliance if you belong to the category of business associates or covered entity and deal with Protected Health Information–PHI. Covered entities include healthcare clearinghouses such as billing services, health plans such as Medicare or company health plans, and health care providers such as surgeons.
  • HIPAA allows you to set rules on who can view and access your health data. This applies to all forms of an individual’s protected health information, including written, oral, and electronic. It is extremely critical to manage your health information securely while being handled by covered entities and business associates. Business associates include medical equipment companies and medical transcription services.
  • HIPAA ensures no misuse of your private health information by any third party and protects individuals’ health data from cyber-attacks. With HIPAA, an individual can access and restrict sharing of such private information, and receive notifications when their information is being shared. Individuals can see their medical records as well as apply corrections to these records.
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our approach

Implementing HIPAA from a compliance perspective requires several details to be addressed in an effective and methodical manner. TechForing has the required expertise to help you gain HIPAA compliance and follows essential HIPAA mandates. We help you with HIPAA compliance in a step-by-step manner as described below:

1

HIPAA Entity Identification

We help you identify your classification under HIPAA in terms of a covered entity or business associate. Covered entities include:

  • Health care providers
  • Health plans such as health insurance companies
  • Healthcare clearing houses

Business associates do business with covered entities or deal with protected health information. We help in identifying and classifying based on HIPAA definitions.

2

PHI

PHI stands for Protected Health Information, which can include anything in the patient health record. As part of HIPAA, it is crucial to identify PHI and maintain privacy regarding this data. Not all health data can be considered PHI and regulated by HIPAA. It must meet the following criteria:

  • The patient must be able to identify with the data.
  • During care, this data must be disclosed to a covered entity.

We help you maintain the security and privacy of PHI.

3

Identify HIPAA Rules

Identifying the rules to be implemented plays a key role in HIPAA compliance. The rules are broadly classified as:

  • Security rules which deal with confidentiality, integrity, and availability of health information
  • Privacy rules which deal with prevention of unauthorized disclosure of health data
  • Breach notifications ensure the notification mechanisms are in place in case of a data breach.

4

Maintain Privacy

In all circumstances, unless the patient has approved of allowing disclosure of their information, the data privacy needs to be maintained. We can share the data only in case of:

  • Shared with any individual that has been allowed by the patient
  • For treatment, payment, or general health care operations

In every other case, data privacy needs to be maintained and we help you with this

5

NPP

NPP stands for Notice of Privacy Practices. All practices need to provide patients with a Notice of Privacy Practices. Our team works with your organization to implement the NPP. The NPP must inform patients of the uses and disclosures of PHI that may take place, and also define the patient’s right to access and amend their medical information.

6

Required Access Controls

Access controls manage centrally controlled and easily accessible user record entries with usernames and passwords. This also includes a well-defined procedure to be incorporated to disclose information in case of emergency.

7

Administrative Safeguard

We help you place safe authentication mechanisms and monitor for situations of unauthorized access to data or alteration of information. Administrative Safeguards require practices to create and maintain updated policies and procedures. This also includes employees learning to follow procedures on how to safeguard the security of PHI. We train employees on their access rights and responsibilities with handling PHI. Essential items covered here include:

  • Acceptable use of policies
  • Sanction policies to discipline employees who violate HIPAA law
  • Information access policies to grant access to health records
  • Security awareness training
  • Contingency planning, which includes adequate preparation, policies, and procedures in order to respond to emergencies

8

Technical Safeguards

Technical safeguarding includes practices and procedures, along with the correct software and equipment to protect PHI. We help you incorporate these changes and allow PHI access only to those who are allowed. Other areas included are:

  • Ensuring encryption and decryption of information is completed before transmitting any patient’s information. So, it will be unreadable to anyone other than the intended parties.
  • Policies and procedure set up to destroy PHI when it’s no longer necessary to perform a job
  • If required, we implement hardware or software to protect PHI.
  • Tracing system activity to a specific user accessing PHI
  • We will protect any data received from other practices or authorized vendors.

9

Physical Safeguard

One of the core components of HIPAA compliance is traceable audit logs. This helps to safeguard private information and register all transactional details. We help you identify the most secure way to handle and access PHI, and maintain isolation levels, while handling health-related sensitive data by an allowed user. We must monitor all access. Our team works towards achieving this for your organization.

10

Key Roles

HIPAA requires that every practice designates a HIPAA security and HIPAA privacy officer. These are individuals who lead the implementation and training of HIPAA requirements for your practice. We support training within the organization.

We incorporate these guidelines and provide immediate remediation based on HIPAA standards.

$12b

Total cost for US Hospitals for Data Breaches

1769

Lost or stolen Records Per Data Breach

41%

Of Breaches were Discovered By patient Compliment

70%

Of Hospitals say protecting Patient Data is not a Priority

38%

Of Hospitals informed nobody of the Breach

Importance of HIPPA Security Compliance

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why us

  • HIPAA compliance by itself is a vast subject, and it is a complex procedure to identify if you need to be HIPAA compliant or not. Identifying and becoming HIPAA compliant is crucial to the continuity of your business. HIPAA is mandatory as per the US Department of Health and Human Services–HSS. HSS governs all healthcare related activities by ensuring healthcare organizations implement secure electronic access to all health-relevant data. This also includes remaining compliant with the privacy regulations established by HSS.
  • Falling victim to a healthcare data breach can have long-term repercussions and also attract heavy fines. These fines can vary from unknowingly violating HIPAA to willful negligence of HIPAA. HIPAA violations fines vary between $100 and $50,000 per violation, depending on the severity of the offense.
  • TechForing helps you identify and define a roadmap to become HIPAA compliant. We have experts in the field to support you throughout the journey and also help you make the required amendments to identify the risk factors. Our support extends to identifying, acquiring, and renewal of HIPAA for individuals and businesses. We strive to ensure a hassle-free process is in place, while helping you becomes HIPAA compliant.

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