Running a small clinic is complicated enough but add on compliance regulations and it gets downright daunting. Of course, in the healthcare space, the most daunting of these regulations is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, otherwise known as HIPAA. In this article I will give a brief overview of HIPAA and help you understand how a quality healthcare IT Provider, with an in depth understanding of the requirements of HIPAA, can help keep your clinic compliant.
A Brief History
First a quick bit of history. HIPAA was enacted in 1996 with the primary goals of ensuring health insurance portability, which allowed people to maintain health insurance coverage when changing jobs or losing employment, and to attempt to reduce healthcare costs by standardizing electronic health data interchange for administrative and financial transactions.
HIPAA also set in place some provisions for the privacy and security of medical records and other personal health information (PHI), but it wasn’t until the HITECH act in 2009 that the strongest regulations and penalties were enacted.
The Three Pillars of HIPAA Compliance
In order to be compliant with HIPAA you must be familiar with these three main pillars.
- Privacy Rule:
- The Privacy Rule governs how PHI can be used and disclosed, ensuring patient’s rights to their medical information are respected.
- Security Rule:
- The Security Rule mandates safeguards for electronic PHI. This includes administrative, physical, and technical protections.
- Breach Notification Rule:
- The Breach Notification Rule requires that, in the event of a breach of unsecured PHI, your clinic needs to notify the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the affected individuals, and in some cases the media.
Compliance Matters for Small Clinics!
Non-compliance with HIPAA can lead to significant fines, reputational damage, and loss of trust from patients. Things can quickly turn into a nightmare scenario. Imagine your clinic’s network is breached and bad actor is demanding ransom to return your data. Your patients are now furious that their personal info is in the hands of criminals, you’re being investigated and fined for non-compliance, and you’re paying extremely costly rates to IT security specialists to try to recover your data and clean up the mess!
No reputable IT provider can guarantee that you won’t be breached, but a good IT provider will make sure your systems are compliant and advise you on the IT policies and procedures you should have in place to ensure compliance. The fact is, clinics that stay compliant, are far less likely to breached in the first place.
If you’re interested, the HHS keeps a list of breaches they are investigating or have investigated over the last 24 months. Also, The HIPAA Journal has a list of common violations along with real examples and fine amounts.
Steps to HIPAA Compliance
- Appoint a Privacy Officer: Designate someone in your office responsible for overseeing HIPAA compliance within your clinic. This person will be responsible for policy enforcement and staff training.
- Conduct a Risk Assessment: Assess and document where your PHI is stored, how it used, and what risks exist. This helps in identifying security gaps.
- Implement Safeguards:
- Administrative: Develop policies for data handling, data access, and response plans for a potential breach
- Physical: Secure any physical records and control access to areas where PHI is accessible as well as servers and other IT infrastructure.
- Technical: Use encryption where data is stored and ensure encryption is in place when data is transferred, install secure networks, and ensure your software applications are compliant.
- Staff Training: Regular training sessions with staff are vital. Everyone from clinicians to administrative staff should understand what is required of them to keep PHI private and secure.
- Business Associate Agreements (BAA): If you share PHI with any third party or even if you grant access to a third party where they could potentially see PHI, you must ensure they’re compliant through a signed BAA.
- Document, Document, Document: Keep detailed records of your compliance efforts, including risk assessments, training, and policy updates.
Your IT Provider’s Role
Your IT provider is essential to your compliance. A good healthcare IT provider has a deep understanding of the requirements necessary to keep your clinic compliant with HIPAA. A good healthcare IT provider will also provide you with:
- Customized IT Solutions: Tailored to meet the specific needs of small clinics and focusing on HIPAA compliance.
- Consulting and Regular Audits: Assessments of your current compliance status, guiding you through necessary improvements, and regularly auditing your systems and reporting findings.
- Ongoing Support: From ensuring software and firmware updates are maintained and providing training resources to helping with day-to-day issues, your IT provider should be your ongoing daily business partner helping ensure that your technology works so you can concentrate on running your clinic.
As we’ve laid out above, HIPAA compliance can be daunting. But, with the right IT provider and good policies and procedures that are regularly followed and enforced, compliance doesn’t need to be overwhelming.
If you are looking for great IT services company with a deep understanding of HIPAA compliance, please reach out to us at AJD Tech. Our history is in healthcare with our founder spending 14 years in healthcare IT before starting AJD Tech. Not only can we help you with HIPAA compliance, but we also have a strong focus on employing friendly and responsive support technicians that will be there to assist you at a moments notice. Go ahead, Google us and read all our 5-star reviews!