What should you look for in a good healthcare hosting provider? Healthcare hosting providers must comply with HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which means they must protect and secure patient records. When you look at healthcare hosting providers, you want to know how HIPAA audit-ready the healthcare host is.
How to Become HIPAA-Compliant: Our 10-Step Guide
One of the problems with our increasingly technological world is that the speed at which our devices and services upgrade and make older versions obsolete can be dizzying. It feels like only an instant before the latest smartphone or flatscreen TV is being replaced with the bigger, better, faster model.
The same holds true in the world of hosting, data information, and server management. And while it can be tough to keep up for any type of business, it’s crucially important if your company is involved with health care IT and has to maintain HIPAA Compliance.
HIPAA Compliance Guide – How to Comply with HIPAA
Overwhelmed with HIPAA compliance? You’re not alone. Compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is important to the covered entities and business associates that are expected by the federal government to follow the law.
However, the requirements of HIPAA and its regulatory agency, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), are not as rigid as they first may seem. We’ve detailed the broad concepts required to understand HIPAA or HIPAA compliant hosting in this article, which serves as a beginner’s HIPAA Compliance Guide.
Why HIPAA?
The healthcare privacy and security law was written to encompass the broad array of organizations for which it was intended. For that reason, the HHS website notes that “there is no single standardized program that could appropriately train employees of all entities.”[i]
Nonetheless, training is a requirement of HIPAA, so it’s necessary to find a strong beginner’s guide that can be used to train your employees on the essentials of compliance. Most of what is available online through the federal government is either aggregations of disparate pieces of information or sizable PDFs, such as the Guide to Privacy and Security of Electronic Health Information[ii] – created by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The former is a bit disorganized. While the latter can be great as course material, its 60+ pages are overkill for the purpose of an initial overview.
Managed Hosting Solutions for Global Membership Organizations
Global membership associations must find ways to strategically operate their infrastructure and provide services. Often, such strategic operation involves managed hosting. Managed hosting can be understood in contrast to unmanaged hosting. It can also be understood as one of the various services provided through a host’s role as a managed services provider (MSP). By looking at other core services provided by MSPs, we also get a sense of the services that are often included in managed hosting environments.
Can Drupal Websites Be HIPAA-Compliant?
Any companies using Drupal, especially those that are within regulated industries such as healthcare, have to be diligent and proactive about installing any patches in order to maintain security. By using HIPAA-compliant managed services through a host with a strong healthcare background, you will be able to benefit from infrastructure that is engineered to guard against any security incidents and HIPAA violations; you will also be able to have someone pay attention to security updates when they are released so that your site is patched right away. Improving the password needs of the system and encrypting the web forms that are submitted by users are steps you can take yourself to ensure there is full HIPAA compliance within the software layer.
HIPAA Compliance E-book
Basics of HIPAA Compliance and HITECH
What exactly is HIPAA?
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is a US law that was passed to safeguard data and keep it from getting into the wrong hands. HIPAA became law when President Bill Clinton signed it in August 1996. Whether you agree with the regulations of HIPAA compliance or not, well, they exist – and it can be expensive to your pocketbook and reputation to neglect them.
Do Healthcare Surveys Need to Be HIPAA Compliant Too?
One of the biggest challenges for doctors, hospitals, insurance carriers, and any other organizations handling patient data is HIPAA compliance. Compliance with HIPAA, short for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, can get particularly tricky for these organizations when it comes to communicating with patients and gathering feedback. For instance, these organizations must use HIPAA-compliant email, messaging, and patient reviews, which must be compliant but are often a source of violations.
HIPAA Compliant Hosting for a Web Application: 8 Questions to Ask
The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act is the first consideration for any conscientious healthcare organization when considering infrastructure for a web application. After all, they need to know that any protected health information (PHI) – that is, health information of individuals that is protected by the US government through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – is secured when it is stored, processed, or transmitted through the hosting service. HIPAA rules relate to data handling regardless of the party performing the handling; nonetheless, there are questions that you will specifically want to ask when you set up hosting for a web app, or for anything else.
Hospital Recycling Audit Reveals PHI Disposal Often Incorrect (Study)
A recent study demonstrated how problematic health record disposal is. The Privacy and Security Rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) make it clear how to properly get rid of health records while maintaining the confidentiality of patients and protecting their rights. The study indicates that poor disposal of records occurs frequently and is a strong area to target if you want to bolster your defenses against HIPAA violations. Along with a concern with paper PHI in an era when it can get overlooked, it is crucial to have strong protections for the increasing volume of electronic records as well.
Office 365 or Google Docs for HIPAA Compliance
Organizations that handle healthcare data, whether they are covered entities (healthcare providers, plans, or data clearinghouses) or their business associates, must meet the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). HIPAA and HITECH (the Health Information for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009) are US federal laws that created regulations related to how sensitive personal health data is used and disclosed (essentially in an effort to protect it and make it accessible to patients). It is necessary for doctors, hospitals, health insurers, and other healthcare organizations to meet the stipulations within these laws and to have the responsibilities within the relationship defined by a business associate agreement (BAA). The BAA contract is important because it clarifies all aspects of data creation, storage, receipt, and transmission so that accountability is possible for all privacy and security concerns.
