If you aren’t completely familiar with HIPAA regulations and what they entail, it’s important for the sake of your business to find someone who is. Knowing who must comply with HIPAA is one thing, but knowing how to comply is another. There are obviously way too many compliance regulations for HIPAA than we can explain here, but we will give you a brief overview of who is required to comply and how some of those people comply.
Who Has to Comply With HIPAA?
Any individual or company that regularly works with patients and stores medical information must comply with HIPAA. These places include, but are not limited to, hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, pharmacies and even individual doctors. Also, any healthcare provider is held to strict HIPAA guidelines.
Where it gets tricky is when work gets delegated. An individual contractor or managed service providers could help a healthcare provider process claims, take care of billing issues or just provide overall quality assurance. Basically, it doesn’t matter what title a person has. If they access confidential client information for any reason, they need to be familiar with HIPAA. Those people and companies are held to the same standard of HIPAA compliance as the providers themselves could face the same penalties if regulations are violated.
How People Comply With HIPAA
There are many ways a Managed Service Provider can help companies comply with HIPAA. First off, any and all confidential data must be encrypted to provide an added layer of protection for client information. IT developers for healthcare companies have general knowledge of HIPAA requirements, so they can add features many other companies don’t have or need.
Some of these features include:
- Auto time-out and log-off
- Strong passwords and unique user IDs
- Ability to audit
- Recovery and backup functions
- Strong encryption
Most national IT support services will have some sort of training program available to anyone within a company needing to be aware of HIPAA regulations. Without the help of these IT managed service providers, companies could be putting themselves at risk of committing a potential HIPAA violation.
With the sensitivity that comes with HIPAA, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. Feel free to contact us if you are in need of a managed service provider to ensure your company knows how to comply with HIPAA.
