As was previously specified in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the HITECH Act of 2009 extended the duties that businesses have in relation to preserving the privacy of people (hipaa). When it comes to the convenience of access, technology offers organizations a great deal of fantastic advantages; however, it also means that there are a number of security threats that need to be taken into consideration and minimized to the greatest extent feasible. In order to make sure that you are in compliance with hipaa and hitech, this blog will provide you with a general description of what you will require. On the other hand, the entire scope of this subject is far more involved than what can be described in this article; thus, it is imperative that you seek the advice of a professional in order to guarantee that your company is in compliance. a set of physical safeguards Even though the great majority of information in today’s world is stored digitally, you are still required to offer basic physical precautions if you preserve any health information pertaining to your workers, customers, or patients. Some examples of physical safeguards that are required include the following as examples: The information that you save should be backed up automatically to a distant place, such as in a “cloud” system. This is an important aspect of data backup and storage. facility security – wherever location you decide to back up your data to, that location need to have comprehensive security measures in place, such as video monitoring and restricted access to the spaces where the servers are located. disaster mitigation and recovery – the location of the server should also have fire suppressants and recovery procedures in place to guarantee that the data that has been backed up is safeguarded in the case of a catastrophe. If you want to be in compliance with HITECH and HIPAA, you should make sure that the service you pick has all of these security measures and more. This is because it is quite unlikely that you will be backing up your data to your own servers. A crucial component of ensuring compliance is access control, which involves restricting who may access the data that you own. Ensure that the data storage system you choose includes a feature that allows for automated logoffs and needs unique logins from each user simultaneously. In addition to this, it should be able to encrypt and decrypt any and all data, regardless of whether the data is in transit (for example, while it is being shared with the person) or when it is at rest (simply being stored on your drives). administrative precautions and protections An additional need for your system is that it must be equipped with administrative capabilities that enable you to carefully monitor and safeguard the data that you are keeping. This includes the items listed below: login monitoring – administrators need to be able to observe who is accessing what data and keep track of any modifications that are made to the data that is being saved. These capabilities are necessary for monitoring logins. There should also be the ability to assign various degrees of access to different users of your system. This is part of the process of restricting access. Those who work at your call center, for instance, could simply have access to the names and contact information of patients, whilst those who are in higher management positions might have access to the whole records. When it comes to hipaa and hitech compliance, these kinds of measures are only the beginning of the process. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the full complexity and breadth of these two compliance acts, particularly when it comes to your information technology systems. If you want to avoid incurring penalties and fines for violating these acts, you should make sure that you collaborate with a professional when it comes to creating and maintaining systems that are compliant.
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