By
Jyoti Tejpal
Experienced healthcare compliance, Professionals navigate thru Customized Compliance Management Provider, Credentialing Simplified & user-friendly Credentialing
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HIPAA Compliance Software helps medical practices to provide compliance with federal HIPAA regulations. These solutions offer to keep patients’ protected health information secure and can also offer risk management, respect, and audit planning.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the HIPAA Privacy Rule, or Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information, establishes national standards for the protection of certain health information. The Security Rule provides a national set of security standards for protecting specific health information which is held or transferred in electronic form.
The Security Rule operational in the Privacy Rule’s protections by addressing the technical and non-technical safeguards that covered entities should put in place to secure individuals’ electronic PHI (e-PHI). Within HHS, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is responsible for enforcing the Privacy and Security Rules with voluntary compliance activities and civil money penalties.
HHS points out that as health care providers and entities dealing with PHI move to computerized operations. They are automated physician order entry (CPOE) systems, electronic health records (EHR), and radiology, pharmacy, and laboratory systems, HIPAA compliance is more critical than ever. Similarly, health plans offer help to claims as well as care management and self-service applications. While all of these electronic methods provide increased efficiency and mobility, they phenomenally enhance the security risks facing healthcare data.
The Security Rule is in place to protect the privacy of individuals’ health information, while at the same time allowing covered entities to adopt new technologies to enhance the quality and efficiency of patient care. The Security Rule, by design, is flexible enough to provide a covered entity to implement policies, procedures, and technologies that are suited to the entity’s size, organizational structure, and risks to patients’ and consumers’ e-PHI.
The HHS needs physical and technical safeguards for organizations about sensitive patient data. These physical safeguards include…
On the same guidelines, the technical safeguards of HIPAA need to have access control restricting only authorized personnel to access ePHI. Access control has…
Other technical policies for HIPAA compliance requirements to cover integrity controls, or measures put in place to check that ePHI is not altered or destroyed. IT disaster recovery and offsite backup are critical components which monitor that electronic media errors and failures are quickly remedied so that patient health information is recovered accurately and intact. One final technical safeguard is the network or transmission security that ensures HIPAA compliant hosts protect against unauthorized access to ePHI. This cover-up addresses all methods of data transmission, including email, internet, or private networks, like a private cloud.
Keep patients’ information safe: All healthcare organizations and allied health professionals are required by federal law to protect patients’ private health information. HIPAA compliance software offers any business involved in healthcare with a framework to help the critical steps are taken with the patient’s individual health information to adhere to federal regulations.
Staying up to date with compliance changes: HIPAA compliance software updates user on any healthcare regulation changes that might occur. If the business has to change existing protocols to comply with new standards, the user will know about it ahead of time.
Data security: Protecting user patients’ digital privacy and limit access to secure data, allowing THE practice to comply with HIPAA regulations.
Vendor management: Managing relationships with sellers, like billing companies and pharmacies. In some software tools, this module helps conduct seller audits to keep that they’ve implemented the IT security infrastructure required to protect patients’ data.
Audit management: Receiving an overall overview of the user organization’s existing compliance posture. These mandatory audits span the organization’s privacy and security infrastructure and are done to identify risk areas.
Remediation plans: Addressing the compliance gaps identified during self-audits. Remediation plans are unique for each organization and layout clear, actionable steps to patch up the differences.
Risk management: Identifying, evaluating, mitigating, and reporting on risk to ensure user and its team are following all HIPAA compliance guidelines.
For healthcare: HIPAA compliance software is designed to ensure businesses, thereof, in the healthcare industry, remain compliant with government regulations.
Compliance reporting: Tracking and reporting regulatory data to either internal management or external stakeholders.
Policy training: Training and educating employees on existing and/or new procedures and policies to make sure companies are complying with HIPAA guidelines.
Most products available in the market are priced every month. Pricing can be divided into three pricing tiers based on their starting price.
All HIPAA compliance software will involve healthcare in the capacity: This doesn’t just mean doctor’s offices. If a user is a billing company that performs work with medical professionals, a user needs to comply with HIPAA, which means they need some way to protect patients’ private health information.
Unique markets requiring a more in-depth software search: If users are in a niche market which is needed to be HIPAA compliant, be on the check for software specific to the needs that might integrate with user software stack. If the user just needs to ensure the emails and texts sent to people are encrypted, the user might not have to pay tons of money to ensure HIPAA compliance.
The COVID-19 pandemic effects on HIPAA compliance: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that its HIPAA-enforcement branch (the Office of Civil Rights or the OCR) would exercise “enforcement discretion”. This means that penalties will not be enforced for failure to comply with regulatory requirements during the “good faith provision of telehealth” during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s critical to note that these regulation changes have been made on a “temporary and emergency basis” so providers should not expect these current conditions to continue to apply after the COVID-19 pandemic has passed.
