HIPAA and Its Impact on Your Business

“It takes less time to do things right than to later face critical, negative, time-consuming consequences”

The significance of HIPAA for Healthcare Services and other businesses

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) indicates the non-disclosure of crucial patient data to others, online and offline, with the maintenance of confidentiality about critical patient health assets. The law conveys that valuable healthcare patient data will only be disclosed with the patient’s consent to others. This law does not apply only to healthcare professionals but also to businesses of other service portfolios. Because Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) manage the health data of their employees online, HIPAA compliance with proper Cyber Security solutions is essential.

According to insights from the HIPAA journal, from 2009-to 2020, 3705 cases of healthcare data breaches were reported with more than 500 records. This resulted in the loss, theft, and unauthorized disclosure of approximately 26 crores of critical healthcare data worldwide.

Upcoming Trends in HIPAA compliance

• Data security, categorization, and classification will be the emphasis considering the data-sharing requirements, after reviewing commercial practices of medical labs with other specialist healthcare providers.
  
• Considering the privacy of Protected Health Information (PHI), Payment Card Industry (PCI) obedience, and Personally-Identifying Information (PII) in the complicated healthcare industry, Cyber Security Services will always be essential. Based on this context, HIPAA regulations, and management oversight as a cyber security solution were implemented. More new remote technologies will be developed to protect the healthcare staff of the future.
  
• Cyber resilience is progressing with recovery from online disasters due to the achievement of all network and system data protection in case of a data breach. Cyber resilience is also significant in the case of critical data exposure.
  
• Premium future-oriented technologies and data security services will be reported for maximum use.
  
• Execution of ideal metadata support for all commercial files and emails that leads to data loss prevention will be a noteworthy technology solution. Other trends to be observed will be enterprise rights management, cloud-access security brokers, and next-generation firewall solutions considering the overall remote network. Here, maximum use of automated products and services will be observed.

Impact of the HIPAA law on your business

• Promotion of Employee Training through mass media communication
  
  Employees are not only the responsible sources for adherence and obedience to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Employers are equally responsible for HIPAA compliance and following the law as they manage crucial healthcare assets and valuable insurance details about other employees.
  
  In this context, HR professionals and admins must be provided HIPAA compliance training to follow the law for every service delivery. Accordingly, non-obedience or non-compliance with the law may lead to accidental disclosure. In this case, a business can be sued in court by the employee whose valuable health data is revealed.

• Maintain storage records and health data security
  
  Businesses must be vigilant (alert) about storing employees’ health assets, specifically health insurance statements, medical certificates, doctor’s prescriptions, blood groups, and details of other related health factors. These files must be protected by authorized and official staff resources.
  
  In the case of record transfer, employees must obey and practice adherence to company policy with HIPAA compliance to avoid legal consequences affecting the reputation of the company. Businesses must maintain detailed logs of employees who transferred, released, or disclosed health data in order to comply with HIPAA regulations.

• Employee sickness and absences
  
  Business owners and employee staff have no right to reveal an employee’s health status, considering the employee’s prior consent. Other staff members can get notified about employees’ leaves, but the reason for the sickness and leave application must not be disclosed according to HIPAA regulations.

• Recruitment of in-house privacy staff
  
  In-house privacy officers must be provided with practical training about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. Business owners must ensure that their privacy offers to comply with HIPAA regulations.

• Company-intensive policies
  
  Small businesses must not only execute company-wide policies but also document Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations as a serious, determined effort that is officially declared. HR policies, company policies, company values, the company’s code of conduct, and decorum must incorporate the significant role of HIPAA compliance. Businesses and service providers that follow HIPAA compliance but without official documentation of an official signatory can still be answerable for non-compliance, leading to penalization with fines.

Parameters and criteria of  HIPAA compliance for businesses

• Define, present, and develop an employee privacy policy.
  
• Recruit a dedicated security staff committed to the compliance set of rules considering the implementation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act with obedience.
  
• Execute an internal audit process monthly for employees to follow HIPAA law regulations and non-disclosure of valuable employee assets. Accordingly, this will develop the prevention of data breach cases with an investigation.
  
• Encourage email security policies.
  
  Train staff with the promotion of e-mail security best practices to avoid phishing cases. Consider strong email passwords, and give authority to your operations with multi-factor authentication. Activate a spam filter and consider making setting changes to block suspicious emails.

• Enhance the value of HIPAA regulations with management’s consideration of clear training procedures.
  
• Perform intense research about data breaches, what signifies a data breach, its consequences, solutions to prevent data breaches, and the level of impact it will have on your business. Also, work on the documentation required with blueprints, kind of a design plan for avoiding any severe business impact must be checked.

Accountability with responsibility for every service delivery plays a significant role in HIPAA regulation and supervision. Governance and direction according to HIPAA rules must be executed considering the upcoming trends of remote working with changing patient care that offer telemedicine services. Governance, Risk, and Compliance-oriented approach must be followed by serious execution of HIPAA regulation practices on a larger scale with appropriate measures.

Take your healthcare business to a higher level with our cyber security solutions. For more details of PruTech Solutions, click here.