What is Hippa compliance

HIPPA Compliance: The What, How and Why

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HIPPA , Health  Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The name itself states that it’s belongs to healthcare sector. HIPAA is a significant legislative Act that has an impact on the American healthcare sector. Companies deal with protected health care information (PHI) or any firms handling treatments, medical bills, insurance and operations in the healthcare sector are subjected to HIPPA compliance. 

How we can define HIPPA? 

HIPPA is a regulatory standard that has to be followed by any organization in the United States to handle and disclose medical information. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Office for Civil Rights (OCR) enforce HIPPA compliance. It is kind of culture to be followed by health care firms to protect the integrity, privacy and security of the protected health information. 

HIPPA Compliance – The Overview 

 Everything in the healthcare industry from CPOE, radiology, pharmacy, and laboratory systems are going towards digitalization. Digital data increase the accessibility and efficiency but at the same time, securing the sensitive data is a complex job for an organization that is the raising point of HIPPA Compliance. They stated that the firms hosted sensitive medical data would follow the below things 

  • Restricted facility access and control with in authorized access. 
  • Policies governing the usage and accessibility of computers and electronic media. 
  • Restrictions on utilizing electronic media and ePHI and transporting, deleting, discarding, and doing so 

HIPPA also provide standard limitations for organizations in providing access to the ePHI. The access control includes the followings 

  • Unique identity for user 
  • Procedures in emergency access 
  • Automation turns off 
  • Decryption and Encryption 
  • Tracking data activity on software and hardware 

Technical policies in HIPPA insist safeguarding electronic patient health information (ePHI) from destruction or moderations. Backup restoring features and IT disaster recovery are the key remedial factors for data restoring. 

Also read: Unfloding the insights in AWS opensearch log analytics

Who need HIPPA Compliance? 

Covered Entities: Healthcare organizations that generate, store, transmit, and handle PHI, such as healthcare providers, health plans, and clearinghouses. 

Business Associates: Business Associates make up the second category to which HIPAA is applicable. These are companies or people that offer services to a covered entity and allow the business associate to have access to PHI that the covered entity controls. Business Associates can be people or organizations that offer services in the legal, actuarial, accounting, IT consulting, data management, administration, finance, or any other industry that interacts with PHI. 

Healthcare Clearing House: The HIPAA regulations define a healthcare clearinghouse as a public or private organization that facilitates the process of health information received from another organization in a nonstandard format or containing nonstandard data content into standard data elements or a standard transaction. Examples of such organizations include billing services, repricing firms, community health management information systems, or community health information systems, as well as value-added networks and switches. 

How to achieve HIPPA Compliance? 

let’s look detailed about how to achieve HIPPA Compliance in step-by-step manner. 

Step 1: Appoint a Security Officer 

 HIPPA’s security rule instructed that every healthcare organization needs to have a security officer to implement and govern the policies. Actually, it is difficult to rely on HIPPA compliance without proper officers.  

Step 2: Create privacy policies 

The organization must maintain the security policies and have a record for all kinds of activities. Additionally, you must make sure that the policies and procedures are regularly reviewed and updated to reflect adjustments made to your company’s environment that may have an impact on the PHI  

Here is some of the policies, you will establish  

  • HIPAA Privacy Regulations 
  • HIPAA Administrative Safeguard Requirements 
  • Physical Safeguard Requirements 
  • Technical Safeguard Requirements 
  • Permissible Use 
  • and Disclosures 
  • Law enforcement Receives Disclosures of Protected Health Information 
  • Uses and Disclosures for Marketing 
  • Notice of Privacy Practices 
  • Business Associate Agreements 
  • HIPAA Privacy Training 
  • Safeguards for Protected Health Information 
  • Privacy Complaints 
  • No Retaliation for Exercising Privacy Rights
  • Access to PHI 
  • Restrictions on 
  • Uses and Disclosures 
  • Amendment to PHI 
  • Minimum Necessary Standard 
  • Authorization for Use and Disclosure of PHI 
  • Verification of Identity 
  • Notification of Breach of Unsecured PHI 

Step 3: Establish Security protocols  

 HIPPA wants healthcare firms to maintain confidentiality and security. It has three types of safeguards which are administrative, Physical and technical. 

 Administrative Safeguards: Organizations need to identify the risks to ePHI, take security steps to reduce those risks, and record their security management approach. 

Physical safeguards: Organizations must safeguard all workstations and devices that hold or transmit ePHI and manage access to the physical locations where it is kept. 

Technical safeguards: To restrict access to e-PHI, organizations must put in place technical measures that make use of hardware, software, and other technology. 

Step 4: Create Agreements with vendors 

 The privacy rule mandates covered entities to obtain assurances from their business associates that they will take steps to ensure the security of the PHI they receive or create on behalf of the covered entity. These assurances are binding as a written business agreement with clearly assigned responsibilities for each party concerning PHI. 

Step 5: Give guidance to your employees based upon HIPPA Compliance 

The degree of HIPAA compliance in your company depends on how well your staff members are aware of and follow the rules. Therefore, it is imperative that you educate your staff about the law, its updates, and its numerous intricacies. 

Additionally, HIPAA training for employees is mandated annually. In accordance with HIPAA, a workforce is defined as “trainees, volunteers, employees, or any other individual whose conduct, while executing work under the direction of a business associate or covered entity, business associate’s or entity’s direct control.” 

Step 6: conduct annual risk assessments to eliminate data breaches 

To identify and evaluate the threats to the privacy, accessibility, and integrity of PHI in their environment, covered entities and business partners are required to complete an annual security risk analysis (SRA). 

Step 7: Create notification protocol for data breach 

 Organizations must create procedures surrounding breach notification in line with HIPAA requirements. According to the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule, covered entities must inform individuals when their unprotected PHI is compromised. Following a breach, the business is required to notify the appropriate parties within 60 calendar days of the time the PHI was compromised or the time it was determined to have been compromised. The compromised data needs to be encrypted. 

How Continuum help to achieve the HIPPA compliance? 

We are the team of US based cloud managed service providers with skilled cloud engineers. Healthcare is the primary industrial sector for us. We also have reputed clients on our side belongs to this sector. Our experts can assist you in achieving HIPPA compliance for your organization so you need not to go through the above-mentioned series of processes.  

Clients are always our top priority; we constantly upgrade ourselves with the last trends and technologies to bring innovations in the cloud sector.  

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