HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and is a series of regulatory laws – outlining the lawful use and disclosure of Protected Health Information (PHI). The main intent of HIPAA policies was to enhance the operations of healthcare industry by reducing costs, simplifying administrative processes, and maintaining the privacy and security of patient health information. However, HIPAA compliance ended up revolving around maintaining the privacy and security of patient’s health information.
Any person or organization dealing in the healthcare or related industry, or has access to protected health information needs to comply with HIPAA.
HIPAA compliance for an organization is meant to protect the privacy and security of Protected Health Information (PHI) that an organization has access to. PHI is any such information that is connected to health condition of an individual/patient. Organizations that look forward to comply with the HIPAA regulations must first determine the regulations they have to comply with. The 2 distinct and separate regulations under HIPAA are:
Safeguards the protected health information safe from a person, administrative, and contractual standpoint.
Safeguards the protected health information specifically in electronic form against any disasters, hackers, and electronic theft.
All organizations are required to comply with the HIPAA Privacy regulations, since Privacy involves safeguards from a people standpoint, but only those who store or transmit protected health information electronically are required to comply with the HIPAA Security regulations which is meant to protect electronic data. Once you know which regulations you need to comply with, then it is just a matter of understanding what you need to do to comply.
The administrative safeguards play a significant role when implementing a HIPAA compliance program. You are required to:
Since we have already done all the hard work, we ensure fast and easy HIPAA training and compliance. All you have to do is get in touch with us, get your organization enrolled, and our exclusive weekly training & compliance program will help you operate your business faster and better.
The physical safeguards have to do everything with who has access to PHI data and how that access is managed. Most of the physical safeguard requirements that developers have to worry about is managed by HIPPA Compliant Hosting companies. The remaining ones are handled by the internal rules laid down by you around who can and cannot access PHI.