Identify the PHI that your organization creates, receives, stores and transmits including PHI shared with consultants, vendors and Business Associates.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a federal law, mainly focused on protecting sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient's consent or knowledge. The law that provides baseline privacy and security standards for medical information of US citizens.
The standard is applicable to covered entities and their business associates like health care clearinghouses, employer sponsored health plans, health insurers, and medical service providers that engage in certain transactions that involve digital transmission of patient health information (PHI)
HIPAA Regulation divided into Security Rule, Privacy Rule, Transactions and Code Sets (TCS) Rule, Unique Identifiers Rule, Breach Notification Rule, Omnibus Final Rule. HIPAA Security Rule requires implementation of 1) Administrative, 2) Physical, and 3) Technical safeguards.In Addition, it imposes other organizational requirements and a need to document processes analogous to the HIPAA Privacy Rule.
Office of Civil Rights (OCR), explains the failure to provide a “specific risk analysis methodology” is due to Covered Entities and Business Associates being of different sizes, capabilities and complexity. As per OCR, the key objectives of a HIPAA risk assessment are :
Identify the PHI that your organization creates, receives, stores and transmits including PHI shared with consultants, vendors and Business Associates.
Identify the human, natural and environmental threats to the integrity of PHI human threats including those which are both intentional and unintentional.
Assess what measures are in place to protect against threats to the integrity of PHI, and the likelihood of a “reasonably anticipated” breach occurring.
Determine the potential impact of a PHI breach and assign each potential occurrence a risk level based on the average of the assigned likelihood and impact levels.
Document the findings and implement measures, procedures and policies where necessary to tick the boxes on the HIPAA compliance checklist and ensure HIPAA compliance.
HIPAA risk assessment, the rationale for the measures, procedures and policies subsequently implemented, and all policy documents must be kept for a minimum of six years.
QRC follows a well-documented approach to work alongside our clients aiding them in attaining their compliance goals. This require a Well-documented execution plan along with defined milestones.
Minimize the key Data Risks by establishing authenticity by controlling access privilege
Ensure your customer that you have adequate physical, network, and process security measures in place to deal with their protected health information (PHI).
Avoid expensive penalties on PHI disclosure
Avoid hefty ones that may occur due to HIPAA violation, and save millions by properly addressing the risk issues.Whilst organization may be able to afford the penalties, negative publicity surrounding PHI or ePHI data isn’t something any of us would need.
Robust Security Management Systems to Protect PHI at all levels
Adopting correct policies and procedures will help in ensuring the reliability of the safeguards,showcasing data handling best practices.
Builds the patient's, stakeholder's and partner's confidence in your brand
When your business is HIPAA compliant, you can demonstrate to everyone who is associated with your business that their information is secure with you.The enhanced trust will ultimately result in increased business.
Protecting Image and Reputation
Complying with the requirements of standard helps an entity to reduce reputation loss because, if the data has been compromised, it has a negative affect on business reputation.